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

by Zeynep Tufekci

People with strong ties likely already share similar views, so such views are less likely to surprise when they are expressed on social media. However, weaker ties may be far flung and composed of people with varying political and social ties. Also, weak ties may create bridges to other clusters of people in a way strong ties do not. For example, your siblings already know one another, and news travels among them in many ways. However, a workplace acquaintance—someone with whom you have a weak tie—who sees a piece of political news from you on Facebook may share it with her social network, her relatives and friends, a group of people you would ordinarily have no access to, save for the bridging role played by the weak tie between you and your work colleague. Social scientists call the person connecting these two otherwise separate

Humans are group animals—aside from rare and aberrant exceptions, we exist and live in groups. We thrive and exist via social signaling to one another about our beliefs, and we adjust according to what we think others around us think. This is absolutely normal for humans. Most of the time we are also a fairly docile species—and when we are not, it is often in organized ways, such as wars. You could not, for example, squeeze more than a hundred chimpanzees into a thin metal tube, sitting knee-to-knee and shoulder-to-shoulder in cramped quarters, close the door, hurl the tube across the sky at great speed, and always expect those disembarking at the other end to have all their body parts intact. But we can travel in airplanes because our social norms and nature are to comply, cooperate, accommodate, and sometimes even be kind to one another. Some social scientists (mostly economists) who imagine humans as selfish and utility-maximizing individuals theorize that people would descend into self-absorbed chaos as soon as external controls on them were lifted. But things are far from that simple. For example, it has been repeatedly found that in most emergencies, disasters, and

This kind of technologically mediated interaction via screens located far from the physical scenes of the clashes does not imply psychological distance. Many who do this type of work report suffering genuine trauma, because the online world is not unreal or virtual. The picture, the voice, or the tweet belongs to a real person. Our capacity for

ordinary people act with altruism and solidarity. Contrary to misleading media reports that disasters descend into chaos or a Hobbesian war-of-all-against-all, sociologists have often found that under the right conditions, altruism, collective help, and effective self-organization dominate such scenarios. Such altruism does not always occur, of course, especially if there are previous cleavages and deep polarizations within the society, but neither is it an uncommon response. In the United States, the September 11 terrorist attack was met by New Yorkers coming together immediately to help the survivors. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, contrary to media reports at the time which were grossly incorrect, the mostly African American survivors trapped in the Superdome without power, water, or functioning toilets nevertheless assembled an impressive self-organization that saved many lives.