Gladwell gone wrong...

Gladwell questions whether the people who log on to their Facebook page are really the best hope for us all? His assertion being that the kind of activism associated with social media doesn’t develop the sort of social ties that are necessary to create real change in high risk areas. Perhaps the present events occurring throughout the Middle East has Gladwell reevaluating his thesis.
Social media has become a coordinating tool for nearly all of the world's political movements (Shirky). Within the last month the world has witnessed this actuality, the power of individuals coming together via Facebook and Twitter to organize for overthrowing their dictatorial governments. Therefore, I present two theories for your consideration…
First, what we have witnessed is the disproval of Gladwell’s hypothesis; that the platforms of social media are built around weak ties which seldom lead to high-risk activism. Gladwell expressly states that social networks are not particularly effective at increasing motivation. “In other words, Facebook activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice.” Like the civil-rights movement’s high-risk activism (to whom Gladwell refers ad nauseum ), Tunisian, Egyptian, Libyan, Iranian (etc.) protestors also exercise “strategic activism: a challenge to the establishment mounted with precision and discipline.”
Second, even if Facebook and Twitter have had less of an effect on other countries uprisings, it is well established that it had a large organizing effect on Tunisia and Egypt, which has had an echoing throughout the rest of the Middle East. Meaning that social media sights have not only a direct effect on organizing protest and forming the social bonds necessary to create change in high risk areas; these sites also helped create change in more liberal countries like Tunisia and Egypt, which are now fueling protests in more repressive and hostile regimes.