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Malcolm Gladwell’s ideas and philosophy in The Tipping Point, as they apply to Occupy Wall Street Movement

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Malcolm Gladwell has attempted to create a unique style of scholarship that navigates between science and popular culture.  As a result he has earned the wrath from both quarters.  For example, scientists accuse him for being simplistic or lacking in rigor. On the other side, commentators from mainstream media accuse him of bringing esoteric scientific concepts to popular discourse. Yet, his book The Tipping Point has sold more than a 3 million copies.  His other titles such as Blink (2005), Outliers (2008), David and Goliath (2013), etc, continue to fascinate and provoke in equal measure. Despite the controversies surrounding some of Gladwell’s inferences, his ideas and philosophies have become assimilated into popular discourse. It is an interesting exercise to study how the most important social movement of recent times – Occupy Wall Street movement (OWS) – measures up in relation to the author’s theories. This essay endeavors to perform the same.

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement witnessed in recent years is one of the most significant socio-political events to have taken place in the history of the United States of America.  Measuring merely by the weight of popular support and enthusiastic participation evinced by the movement, it could be equated with the Civil Rights movement and the Women’s Rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s respectively.  But nothing in popular culture currents of recent years would have led to an anticipation of this sudden collective uprising by a majority of American citizens. The protests and public discussions were centered on the flawed policy priorities of the body politic.  It also addressed the greed-based actions of Corporate America which put profits ahead of social responsibility.  The movement had sprung from the failures of the political and business establishments which have hurt a vast majority of ordinary Americans – the other 99%, as the slogan proclaims.

One of the famous assertions in The Tipping Point is that “ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread like viruses do”. Gladwell equates the birth and progress of social movements to that of epidemics.  One of the features of this process is the ‘law of the few’, whereby 80% of the work is done by 20% of the participants. Gladwell deems it necessary to have charismatic leadership for the sustenance of mass movements.  He posits that these leaders with “a particular and rare set of social gifts” will take up responsibility for 80% of the work. (Bush, 2013, p.38) According to Gladwell these leaders could be of three types – connectors, mavens or salesmen.  But when we study the birth and spread of OWS, it is difficult to identify who the leaders are. In many ways, the OWS does not fit the description of epidemics that Gladwell posits.  In fact, the OWS may not even have a ‘tipping point’, whereby a gathering stream broke into a forceful torrent. It is a movement characterized by steady sharing of information and gradual increase in collective organization. The OWS is also remarkable for its lack of central leadership. It is just through word of mouth publicity and a shared sense of social solidarity that the mass movement materialized.  Eschewing the theories of epidemics formulated by Gladwell, one could even argue that the OWS was nothing short of a nation getting in touch with its revolutionary spirit.  After all, the short history of the country, starting with its fight for independence, is studded with movements of public collective action that have induced progressive changes in the political, legal and cultural domains. (Farhat-Holzman, 2011)  The OWS movement is the most recent in that noble tradition of civil disobedience and collective public action that the country is so proud of.

It is instructive to learn what Gladwell thought of online social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, etc.  The Tipping Point was written before OWS, and it fails to foresee the potential for online social media to spur a mass movement.  Writing for The New Yorker magazine in 2010 he contrasts

“today’s online activists with the young civil rights leaders who launched lunch counter sit-ins in the South in the early 1960s. What social media are not good at is providing the discipline, strategy, hierarchy, and strong social bonds that successful movements require. Such connections are what gave the four student leaders in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960 the courage to defy racial subordination, despite the likelihood of violence. The instigators were two pairs of college roommates. They all lived in the same dorm, and three of them had gone to high school together.”  (Gladwell, as quoted by Bush, 2013, p.38)

Considering what we now know after the fact, Gladwell had underestimated the power of social media. The Occupy Wall Street movement transpired despite the fact that there are several weaknesses to online social networks.  The numerous ‘friends’ we have on Facebook and Twitter are thought of as ‘weak ties’ by sociologists. Though they expose us to a broad range of new ideas and information, our associations with them are not strong.  Some even contended that “the value of social media to the cause of democracy should be measured over the course of ‘years and decades, not weeks and months’. Yet the OWS proved all these presumptions incorrect.  What the OWS has shown is that online activists, with the help of new technology, were even capable of toppling authoritarian regimes.  The Arab Spring (although it has petered out now) that closely followed OWS is a case in point. Nowhere in The Tipping Point do we see Gladwell predicting such possibilities let alone recognizing the power of social media for creating large movements.  Over time, social media may acquire more capability to enhance civil society and hand over power to the people.  In this context it is pertinent to ask what does social media offer that conventional communication modes do not. In response, we can find a set of mass movements in recent years that were built on the back of new digital technology.  For example,

“The protesters who brought down Philippine president Joseph Estrada in 2001 spread word of their street demonstrations via text message. Social media are not magical. Insurgents may not always prevail (as in Iran in 2009). But on balance, social media will bring “a net improvement for democracy,” much as the printing press did.” (“Tweeting toward Freedom? A,” 2011)

His famous quote “The revolution will not be tweeted” has continued to haunt him since the event. In the Tipping Point he argued that “social media tools fail to promote the type of strong interpersonal ties necessary for successful social movement organizing… waves of e-petitions and online public comments will swamp federal agencies in low quality, redundant, and generally insubstantial commenting by the public, drowning out more substantive citizen participation.” (Karpf, 2012, p. 8) In the absence of stronger and real democratic participation, the author reckoned, token digital activism was dismissed as ‘slacktivism’ or ‘clicktivism’. He reasoned that when all that clicking produces no change, citizens will turn bitter or tune out. For example, “high-risk social movement tactics, by contrast, are based on strong ties. Ergo, he suggests, online communications tools are of relatively little use to social movements and political activism. They leverage the wrong type of social ties.” (Karpf, 2012, p. 118)

Yet, OWS is a testimony to how much Gladwell had underestimated the power of this new medium.  Having legitimate grievances is one thing, but to willfully express them against powerful institutions is quite another.  It is still hard to believe that this bold first step in the fight against corporate greed had at last been taken.  Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, which is in the vicinity of NYSE, was the site chosen for the historic moment.  On 17th of September, 2011, a thousand-strong group of demonstrators showed up to the call to Occupy Wall Street.  From that point on, each day, at least a few hundred people took turns to spend the night in the park so as to keep a round-the-clock vigil.  Although a few hundred people may not sound like a lot, the very idea to occupy Wall Street was both revolutionary and provocative.  ‘We are the 99%’ is a perfect slogan for the movement, for not only did it make clear the situation of gross inequality in wealth, but also suggested the great potential power in the hands of the majority – the power of numbers.  The movement grew in strength each day for several months, before a collective fatigue set in and its power fizzled out. However one cannot point to a ‘tipping point’ or a ‘critical mass’ either during its ascendency or during the descent.  In this respect the phenomenal occurrence of OWS is outside the theories presented in The Tipping Point.

One of the key features of OWS is its decentralized organization and a lack of hierarchy among the participants. Modern communication tools such as mobile phones and the Internet have ushered in the era of social networking.  Here, instead of hierarchies one sees a spider web of connections among people. After OWS happened, Gladwell is forced to rethink his assessment of new technology.  Gladwell makes amends to his earlier position by finally revising his understanding of the power of new media. In a lecture delivered in 2013 he refines what is stated in The Tipping Point by contrasting the idea of hierarchy against the millennials’ idea of the network:

“Millennials don’t think in terms of hierarchy, as they are accustomed to looking “out” for information instead of looking “up.” The Internet and social networks give you the information you need. When you think about the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, that was a hierarchy. There was a clear leader—Martin Luther King Jr.—and there was a structure and order in the people below him. Now take a look at the two big millennial-driven movements of recent years—Occupy Wall Street and Arab Spring. Who was the leader? Who drove those initiatives? No one really. They were inspired by social media and the power of the collective. Again, a dramatic difference from other generations with a powerful impact on what you will be like as a leader.” (Karsh & Templin, 2013, p. 61)

In conclusion, it is evident that those who try to predict or project events years in advance are on a slippery slope.  The statistical and analytical tools employed by Gladwell to arrive at his inferences were based on linear models. Real life events, on the contrary, are shaped by several factors whose exact influence is unknown.  To this extent social phenomena can be said to progress non-linearly. This is true of OWS and similar mass movements witnessed in recent years. Gladwell, as well as much of the popular press, got it wrong for this reason. But Gladwell can be credited for bringing insight to the nature of social phenomena. He should also be commended for refining his theories based on the facts surrounding the Occupy Wall Street movement.

 Works Cited

 

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