Zeynep Tufekci and Negar Mottahedeh Talk YouTube, Net Neutrality & Social Movements

ISLAMiCommentary | Julie Poucher Harbin 
Zeynep Tufekci, Assistant Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science, was the guest speaker at a public talk at Duke University last week — “Algorithms and #Ferguson, The New Gatekeepers.”  The talk was geared toward students in Duke professor Negar Mottahedeh’s Social Movements and Social Media seminar, Mottahedeh’s #Selfie seminar, and the Cultures of New Media course taught by Duke anthropologist Rebecca Stein.This particular audio clip (below) from the talk includes observations on the 2009 Iranian election protests, the Arab Spring, ISIS and the Syria Civil war. Mottahedeh asks: “How has YouTube been affected by social movements and does it have algorithms that support or disengage from the activities of social movements?”