#[Insert Social Movement Here]: An Introduction to Zeynep Tufekci’s Twitter and Tear Gas
These days, it seems as if every social movement has a catchy title with keywords indexed by a hashtag: #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter, #OscarsSoWhite, to name a few. It makes me wonder how things used to work. How did earlier movements like the Civil Rights Movement manage to be so effective when there was no such thing as a Tweet that could let people know when and where a protest was taking place or a viral post that could attract thousands of new supporters? Playing a game of Chinese Whispers shows you how ineffective ‘word of mouth’ can be, but that’s all they had; this and perhaps a few phones and telegrams! But despite these challenges, they still did it. I’m not trying to sound Gen Z or anything, but I find this quite amazing, seeing as social media is a driving force in most of the social movements we witness today.
There is no doubt that technology has allowed like-minded people to connect with each other, however, just like most things in life, it comes with its own set of challenges (Tufekci, 2017); I believe this is the point Zeynep Tufekci, the author of Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protests, is trying to illustrate.
With the events of the 2011 Arab Spring as a primary example, Twitter and Tear Gas (Tufekci, 2017) gives an in-depth analysis of modern-day protests and networking. It argues that the public sphere and the rise of social media have affected the organisation and trajectory of 21st-century protests, which has had both a beneficial and adverse impact on social movements (ibid). Tufekci presents these arguments in this Ted Talk:
Connective action has been widely debated in media studies, and there is a substantial amount of literature focusing on the ways technology has affected social movements (McCaughey & Ayers, 2013; Ellcessor, 2018; Leong et al., 2019); a prominent example of this kind of literature is ‘The Logic of Connective Action’ by Lance Bennett and Alexandra Segerberg. Similar to Tufekci (2017), Bennett & Segerberg (2013) contend that the internet can facilitate societal change, however, they believe this is only attainable when connective action is done on a large scale.
Although a majority of Tufekci’s (2017) views coincide with other media scholars who are in favour of digital activism, Twitter and Tear Gas goes one step further by highlighting the different ways technology has been disadvantageous to contemporary social movements. This book opens the reader’s eyes to the fact that the internet could potentially harm those who are trying to do good, and benefit those who aren’t. Above all, it should pique the interest of anyone who cares to make the world a better place. If that is you, you can read the book here!
References:
Bennett, W. L., & Segerberg, A. (2013). The logic of connective action: Digital media and the personalization of contentious politics. Cambridge University Press.
Ellcessor, E. (2018). “One tweet to make so much noise”: Connected celebrity activism in the case of Marlee Matlin. New Media & Society, 20(1), 255–271.
Leong, C., Pan, S. L., Bahri, S., & Fauzi, A. (2019). Social media empowerment in social movements: power activation and power accrual in digital activism. European Journal of Information Systems, 28(2), 173–204.
McCaughey, M., & Ayers, M. D. (Eds.). (2013). Cyberactivism: Online activism in theory and practice. Routledge.
Tufekci, Z. (2017). Twitter and tear gas: The power and fragility of networked protest. Yale University Press.
