Twitter and Tear Gas
Ratings5
Average rating3.8
15
Ratings5
Average rating3.8
A firsthand account and incisive analysis of modern protest, revealing internet-fueled social movements' greatest strengths and frequent challenges. To understand a thwarted Turkish coup, an anti-Wall Street encampment, and a packed Tahrir Square, we must first comprehend the power and the weaknesses of using new technologies to mobilize large numbers of people. Tufekci explains the nuanced trajectories of modern protests--how they form, how they operate differently from past protests, and why they have difficulty persisting in their long-term quests for change. Tufekci speaks from direct experience, combining on-the-ground interviews with insightful analysis. She describes how the internet helped the Zapatista uprisings in Mexico, the necessity of remote Twitter users to organize medical supplies during Arab Spring, the refusal to use bullhorns in the Occupy Movement that started in New York, and the empowering effect of tear gas in Istanbul's Gezi Park. These details from life inside social movements complete a moving investigation of authority, technology, and culture--and offer essential insights into the future of governance.
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A great analysis of the role social-media played in networked protests within the last decade, by an activist/academic with first-hand experience. Tufekci examines how digital networking tools - Twitter, Facebook, etc - help speed up and empower protests movements, that later mostly fail when it comes to collective decision-making, as their short timeline never allows them to develop those skills.
Looking at Tahrir Square, Occupy Wallstreet, Gezi Park, the Umbrella Movement.. she examines their origins, how technologies helped them to organize, to activate the masses. She looks at the political repercussions of Facebook's real-name policies. How anonymity for activists doesn't allow them to attract followers, while non-anonymity leads to harassment. How social media sites give activists and citizens a chance to report disturbing news from within their own country that nationally-controlled mass media stays quiet about. Yet also how the algorithms on these same sites increasingly drown out those news stories / cries for help by favoring likes and happy stories.
Sometimes some of the content felt repetitive, but all in all this is an important book about the overlap of social media and political activism.
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