The ways to connect with others

According to Gladwell’s article, there are two kinds of ties to connect other people. One is “strong ties”, it bases on face-to-face connections. He gives an example of the protest caused four college students (they were friends) by in 1960. He argues that the protest was succeeded, because they had “strong ties”. The other is “weak ties”. The relationships people connect by Internet. He says that SNS are tools for building networks. They don’t need leaders who control activities, because they occur online. In short, he states that physical activities, like a demonstration and a strike, have more influences than actives on Internet.

 However, I cannot agree with his argument, because I think Internet connections are not always “weak ties”. As Larry Rosen said in his lecture, communications using Internet become more common especially among young people, they tend to think Internet communication is main way to communication their friends. In addition, in my experience, LINE (one of very popular Internet service in Japan. we can send message, stamps, movies, images and call for free) has a group function. This is an example Internet tool is useful to make “strong ties”. We can make ”group” within our friends list. (Friends are shown automatically if we know our friends’ addresses and telephone numbers or if we search friends’ ID, we can add them as friends) In the group, everyone can post like the picture. In my case, I join some groups, for example, Waseda students in Lawrence, even classmates in junior high school. I can say they are a kind of reconstructing and reinforcing our communities. Therefore, I think some kinds of tools using Internet have a role to reinforce to people’s tie. That is why I think Internet is useful to connect people strongly.

And I was surprise to see an Egyptian activist’s blog, because her site is much more casual than I had expected. Although I thought activists are very serious and state extreme things, it was not. She even wrote about an occurrence meteorite fell in Russia. I think the aim is to attract people’s attentions and urge people to participate and support her activities. I could understand a bit the reason many people become interested in joining activities thorough Internet.