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

by Zeynep Tufekci

I hoped that digital connectivity would help change the state of affairs in which the powerful could jet-set and freely connect with one another while also controlling how the rest of us could communicate.

new global world order prioritize human development and values, not corporate profits—

I had come to understand the historical transition I was witnessing as part of a broad shift in how social movements operate and how they are opposed by those in power.

This is a story of intertwined fragility and empowerment, of mass participation and rebellion, playing out in a political era characterized by mistrust, failures of elites, and weakened institutions of electoral democracy.

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.

However, the tedious work performed during the pre-internet era served other purposes as well;

There is nothing pleasurable about being teargassed, but the experience of solidarity and altruism within communities engaged in collective rebellion was profoundly moving for people whose lives were otherwise dominated by the mundane struggles for survival and the quest for money.

For example, I talk about what I call “tactical freeze,” the inability of these movements to adjust tactics, negotiate demands, and push for tangible policy changes, something that grows out of the leaderless nature of these movements (“horizontalism”) and the way digital technologies strengthen their ability to form without much early planning, dealing with issues only as they come up, and by people who show up (“adhocracy”).

The Zapatista solidarity networks marked the beginning of a new phase, the emergence of networked movements as the internet and digital tools began to spread to activists, and general populations.

teleology

to people who care about how digital technologies and social change impact the world.

Collective actions, social movements, and revolutions are woven into the fabric of human history. They have been studied at great length and for good reason: they change history.

The sheer, unrestrained brutality of the camel attack and the clumsiness of shutting down all communication networks underscored the inability of Mubarak’s crumbling autocracy to understand the spirit of the time, the energy of the youthful protesters, and the transformed information environment.

Once this large group is formed, however, it struggles because it has sidestepped some of the traditional tasks of organizing. Besides taking care of tasks, the drudgery of traditional organizing helps create collective decision-making capabilities, sometimes through formal and informal leadership structures, and builds a collective capacities among movement participants through shared experience and tribulation.

In some ways, digital technologies deepen the ever-existing tension between collective will and individual expression within movements, and between expressive moments of rebellion and the longer-term strategies requiring instrumental and tactical shifts.

The television pictures did not convey how today’s networked protests operate or feel.

When Facebook friends change their avatar to protest discrimination against gay people, they also send a cultural signal to their social networks, and over time, such signals are part of what makes social change possible by changing culture.

But I have also seen movement after movement falter because of a lack of organizational depth and experience, of tools or culture for collective decision making, and strategic, long-term action.

Rather than a complete totalitarianism based on fear and blocking of information the newer methods include demonizing online mediums, and mobilizing armies of supporters or paid employees who muddy the online waters with misinformation, information glut, doubt, confusion, harrasment, and distraction, making it hard for ordinary people to navigate the networked public sphere, and sort facts from fiction, truth from hoaxes.

Whereas a social movement has to persuade people to act, a government or a powerful group defending the status quo only has to create enough confusion to paralyze people into inaction.

Movements are making their own history, but in circumstances, and with tools, not entirely of their own choosing.

“imagined communities.” People who would never expect to meet in person or to know each other’s name come to think of themselves as part of a group through the shared consumption of mass media like newspapers and via common national institutions and agendas.3

In the early twenty-first century, digital technologies and networks—computers, the internet, and the smartphone—are rapidly altering some of the basic features of societies, especially the public sphere, which social theorist Jürgen Habermas defined as a people “gathered together as a public, articulating the needs of society with the state.”

“Networked public sphere,” like the terms “digitally networked movements” or “networked movements,” does not mean “online-only” or even “online-primarily.”

Producing information glut, inducing confusion and distraction, and mobilizing counter-movements, rather than imposing outright censorship, are becoming parts of the playbook of governments that confront social movements.

In an earlier era, Sana might have kept her frustrations to herself and remained isolated, feeling lonely and misunderstood.

These people usually do not seek out political and dissent outlets and thus are less likely to encounter dissident views. This is why people in power are greatly concerned with controlling the broader public sphere, especially mass media.

Many Western observers were also scornful of the use of the internet for activism. Online political activity was ridiculed as “slacktivism,” an attitude popularized especially by Evgeny Morozov.

This style helped create an unfortunate dynamic where nuanced and complex conversation on the role of digital connectivity in dissent was drowned out by vitriol and over-simplification, as the “sides” proceeded to set up and knock down strawman,

“digital dualism”—the idea that the internet is a less “real” world.

As of this writing, one still encounters reports of top elected officials (and Supreme Court justices) who never use computers.

With so many people already on Facebook, there are huge incentives for new people to get on Facebook even if they dislike some of its policies or features.

Research shows that weak ties are more likely to be bridges between disparate groups.

These people in Tahrir Square were more powerful not only because there were more of them, but also because they were making visible to Egypt, and to the whole world, where they stood, in coordination and in synchrony with one another.

we can travel in airplanes because our social norms and nature are to comply, cooperate, accommodate, and sometimes even be kind to one another.

It is as if we are always playing chess, poker, and truth-or-dare simultaneously.

spends huge sums of money employing hundreds of thousands of people to extensively censor the online world.

In about one generation, we have gone from a world in which cameras were a rarity in many places to one in which billions are connected, almost instantly.

There is a new, radically different mode of information and attention flow: the chaotic world of the digitally networked public sphere (or spheres) where ordinary citizens or activists can generate ideas, document and spread news of events, and respond to mass media.

These dynamics are significant social mechanisms, especially for social movements, since they change the operation of a key resource: attention.

It is difficult to understand today’s social movement trajectories using this traditional notion of censorship.

Just like the mass-media world, the networked public sphere includes formal and informal institutions, gatekeepers, hierarchies, and curators who shape and influence attention flows.

hashtag that was prominent that day: #Tahrirneeds.

Digital tools are not uniform. Rather, they have a range of design affordances that facilitate different paths—a

A common misconception about Twitter is that one must already have a high follower count to gain attention.

Facebook has different affordances for political organizing than Twitter’s ability to ping anyone.

The first thing they needed was attention, a crucial resource for activists.

Onward they went, four Egyptians, fueled by youthful energy, sleeping in shifts, guided by little more than ordinary experience with social media and digital technologies.

Each time after an arrest on the bus system, organizations in Montgomery discussed whether this was the case around which to launch a campaign.

Unlike young Claudette Colvin, Parks was an NAACP secretary and volunteer, a committed and experienced activist.