2. What does he mean when he writes, "Where activists were once defined by their

causes, they are now defined by their tools" (para. 7) ? Do you agree or disagree

with this idea? Explain why.

The author means that now the tools are more important that the message itself.

Explanation:

The excerpt belongs to Small Change: Why the Revolution Won't Be Tweeted, an article written by Malcolm Gladwell, a Canadian journalist and writer. There, he discusses the impact of social media and other new tools in different movements across the world.

In this sentence, Gladwell means that the vehicle the message uses to travel is more important than the message itself. He uses as an example the case of Iran, where people got enough courage to uprise because of social media like Twitter. Even though it is an interesting idea, I don't totally agree with this. I think how the message travels is important, otherwise it could be really important but sterile. There's where the tools take more relevance; sometimes, due to different factors, the tools are faster and more efficient to use communication, but if the message is not relevant, then there are no good reasons to use the tools.