Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest
By Zeynep Tufekci
HM742 .T84 2017
New Arrivals, 2nd floor
Zeynep Tufekci, a information scientist and sociologist at UNC-Chapel Hill, writes about 21st-century protests and social media technology in ways that complicate labeling of social-media-fueled protests as mere “slactavism.” Her unique perspective on this topic, she has participated in many left-leaning and anti-authoritarian protests around the world since the late 1990s, allows her to combine academic analysis with vignettes that demonstrate how social media functioned as a tool for protests. Tufekci argues that even as social media and the internet allow protests to quickly gain numbers and power, the ease of organizing mass protests in this networked age can limit the potential for participants to build the kinds of organizational infrastructure that helped older protest movements, such as the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, pivot to meet new challenges.
