Occasionally I acquire a book that simply gives me goosebumps and a joy to read. I feel honored to even hold the book in my hands. Reluctantly I put the book away and the withdrawal symptoms come. An anxious sensation sets in, preventing me from reading the book too fast, because what then will I read?
Zeynep Tufekci is the programmer turned sociologist, the associate professor studying technology’s impact on social movements, protests and surveillance capitalism. She’s also a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, the Atlantic and other places, with an amazing sense for systematic thinking. In 2017 she published the book Twitter and Tear Gas – The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. It’s a delight to read.
She studies social movements, usually anti-authoritarian ones, and combines this with social media: how does social media impact movements, their organizations, their decision-making, their goals? Examples are given from Tahrir square in Cairo, Egypt, Gezi Park in Istanbul, Turkey, the Occupy movement and Black Lives Matter. As a sociologist she turns to social media and field studies, meaning she actually spends time with activists in the streets and public spaces.
One advantage of networked protests using social media is the rapid ability to organize people. Movements can mobilize and organize as fast as the police. People who never organize or even utter a words in defiance can quickly mobilize, which is another advantage. One disadvantage for movements is that the algorithms governing social media are out of control, and can easily become a hindrance to lbtqia+-activists or other political activists who cannot be anonymous or are targeted with hatred and threats. Social media is a corporate-owned public sphere, flawed compared to the coffeehouses and tea-houses of old. No matter how much software developers at Google or Facebook sympathize with activists in, say, Turkey, the system they work for is manipulated and turned against the activists.
Another part of the book delves into how regimes and governments strike back, by attempting to control the public (digital) sphere. Responses from the governments in Russia, Turkey, Egypt and China are presented. They can actively drown movements and activists in hatred, threats or misinformation. There’s also the risk of omnipresent surveillance of any political comment on social media.
But social movements don’t necessarily fail and when they fail, the faults may be their own or indirectly caused by social media and the (sloppy) usage of Internet. In comparison to the Civil rights movement, which Zeynep covers also, the new social movements tend to lack some very important aspects: organization, decision-making and goals. She gives the reader different detailed examples, which I will not delve into here, of how movements work for change. However, they often lack a clear set of achievable goals they can organize around and compromise about. Since they lack a clear decision-making structure, they are unable to discuss, vote and compromise. If a government actually is ready to negotiate, what is the movement going to negotiate about? And how are they to discuss the offers made by the government? Can they even measure how close or far away their goals are? If they are too far away, will people abandon the movement, and if they are too close, do they take “victory”/change for granted?
All in all, this book is a pleasure to read. Zeynep presents theories, how algorithms work, how decision-making is made (or unmade), how movements begin and where they fall asunder, how governments respond and so much more. If you’re ever interested in networked protests, social movements and the Internet – this one is a must.
Massive Attack – False Flags