Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest

by Zeynep Tufekci

With my newfound power to connect through a shaky, sputtering modem, and full of curiosity, I participated in the earliest global social movement of the internet era.

The internet similarly allows networked movements to grow dramatically and rapidly, but without prior building of formal or informal organizational and other collective capacities that could prepare them for the inevitable challenges they will face and give them the ability to respond to what comes next.

Ethan Zuckerman calls this the “cute cat theory” of activism and the public sphere. Platforms that have nonpolitical functions can become more politically powerful because it is harder to censor their large numbers of users who are eager to connect with one another or to share their latest “cute cat” pictures.

Libraries are core symbols of an ethic of non-commodified knowledge. Anyone, regardless of how much money she or he has, can check out a book, and a book is passed from person to person in a chain of knowledge sharing.

“Why have we never talked to each other before? We have so much in common,” exclaimed Leyla. Meral wiped a tear with her yemeni. “I know, mother, I know,” she said, using a form of address a traditional Turkish woman might use with her mother-in-law or actual mother. “They always keep us apart, and that is how they oppress us both.” They continued to cry and hug and spent most of the afternoon talking.

“Real faggots oppose oppression, you see,”