Recent reading
Mar. 14th, 2019 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
luzulaTwitter and Tear Gas: the Power and Fragility of Networked Protest by Zeynep Tufekci (2017)
This is a seriously impressive and useful book. It's about the difference between social movements in the age of the internet compared to before the internet, written by someone who's a programmer, a social scientist and an activist herself. Some of her examples are the Arab Spring, Occupy, and student protests in Hong Kong, compared with the earlier civil rights movement in the US. But she also looks at right-wing movements like the Tea Party.
Tufekci describes the strengths of social media for activists in creating a networked alternative public sphere, mobilizing many people quickly, and organizing logistics efficiently. Then she goes on to also describe the downsides, saying that a large protest in the past is really not the same phenomenon as a large protest today. In the past, you had to do lots of organizing in order to make a large protest happen, and that organizing meant that you had built up structures that would also give you the capacity to make decisions and shift tactics when challenged. By contrast, a large protest today is often formed quickly by people who have not worked together before, and they often lack this capacity and have to start building it after they come together. This is why the US government could ignore the huge protests against the war in Iraq.
Apparently the often anti-authoritarian and leaderless structure of today's movements (such as Occupy) arose before the internet, but the internet facilitates this form of organization. Tufekci sees both pros and cons. I have to admit that I was a bit aghast at the description of Occupy's meeting techniques, where a single person in a huge group can block a decision and also the facilitator has a lot of informal power. : / Tufekci highlights how this can lead to "tactical freeze" where a group can't move forward and can't make decisions. The pros are that it encourages participation by all and that a movement can't be taken over as easily by co-opting or jailing its leadership.
Another part of the book is about government repression and counter-strategies against the kind of internet activism and public sphere that was part of the Arab Spring, when Middle-eastern governments were taken by surprise because they didn't take social media seriously. Since then they have wised up. The counter-strategies are not so much censorship and surveillance (though they have their place) as information glut, trolling, and casting doubt on activists' reports (for example by "exposing" them as hoaxes and also planting hoaxes of their own). Doubt and confusion make people downcast and less likely to act. There's a section on China's strategies, which are somewhat different since they have a wall around their internet in a way other countries don't. Apparently they let people criticize the government in social media (and use that to gather information about what people think) as long as it doesn't seem likely to lead to collective action, in which case it is censored. Also whenever something important happens that might lead to protest, there's an army of government trolls that start posting. But not to criticize or argue--instead they post cute cat pictures or some other unrelated thing, in order to deny attention to the protest. Finally Tufekci also writes about the unreliability of using social media owned by companies who want ad revenues and whose algorithms can hinder social movements.
In short, this book is highly recommended if you're interested in politics!
This is a seriously impressive and useful book. It's about the difference between social movements in the age of the internet compared to before the internet, written by someone who's a programmer, a social scientist and an activist herself. Some of her examples are the Arab Spring, Occupy, and student protests in Hong Kong, compared with the earlier civil rights movement in the US. But she also looks at right-wing movements like the Tea Party.
Tufekci describes the strengths of social media for activists in creating a networked alternative public sphere, mobilizing many people quickly, and organizing logistics efficiently. Then she goes on to also describe the downsides, saying that a large protest in the past is really not the same phenomenon as a large protest today. In the past, you had to do lots of organizing in order to make a large protest happen, and that organizing meant that you had built up structures that would also give you the capacity to make decisions and shift tactics when challenged. By contrast, a large protest today is often formed quickly by people who have not worked together before, and they often lack this capacity and have to start building it after they come together. This is why the US government could ignore the huge protests against the war in Iraq.
Apparently the often anti-authoritarian and leaderless structure of today's movements (such as Occupy) arose before the internet, but the internet facilitates this form of organization. Tufekci sees both pros and cons. I have to admit that I was a bit aghast at the description of Occupy's meeting techniques, where a single person in a huge group can block a decision and also the facilitator has a lot of informal power. : / Tufekci highlights how this can lead to "tactical freeze" where a group can't move forward and can't make decisions. The pros are that it encourages participation by all and that a movement can't be taken over as easily by co-opting or jailing its leadership.
Another part of the book is about government repression and counter-strategies against the kind of internet activism and public sphere that was part of the Arab Spring, when Middle-eastern governments were taken by surprise because they didn't take social media seriously. Since then they have wised up. The counter-strategies are not so much censorship and surveillance (though they have their place) as information glut, trolling, and casting doubt on activists' reports (for example by "exposing" them as hoaxes and also planting hoaxes of their own). Doubt and confusion make people downcast and less likely to act. There's a section on China's strategies, which are somewhat different since they have a wall around their internet in a way other countries don't. Apparently they let people criticize the government in social media (and use that to gather information about what people think) as long as it doesn't seem likely to lead to collective action, in which case it is censored. Also whenever something important happens that might lead to protest, there's an army of government trolls that start posting. But not to criticize or argue--instead they post cute cat pictures or some other unrelated thing, in order to deny attention to the protest. Finally Tufekci also writes about the unreliability of using social media owned by companies who want ad revenues and whose algorithms can hinder social movements.
In short, this book is highly recommended if you're interested in politics!
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Date: 2019-03-16 02:31 pm (UTC)Marketing is weird
Date: 2021-08-09 09:39 pm (UTC)...as I was tracking down this book on Kobo (my ebook purveyor of choice), it suggested that "People who read these also enjoyed..." -- all the Murderbot books.
Now I'm imagining Murderbot running meetings and it's not pretty.
Re: Marketing is weird
Date: 2021-08-10 11:08 am (UTC)Ha ha, it's true for the small sample I have! And no, I think Murderbot is not the ideal person to run meetings...