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

by Zeynep Tufekci

Network internalities are the benefits and collective capabilities attained during the process of forming durable networks which occur regardless of what the task is, or how trivial it may seem, as long as it poses challenges that must be overcome collectively and require decision making, building of trust, and delegation among a semidurable network of people who interact over time.24 I contrast these with “network externalities,” an established phrase that is often defined as an increase in benefit from a good or service when the number of people using that good or service goes up. For example, a fax machine is much more useful if there are many people using fax machines. In contrast, network internalities refer to the internal gains achieved by acting in networks over time. Network internalities are not always easily visible, because most of the time, analysis of the gains attained from the work itself focuses on the task: Was the rally organized and held? Did the word get out? In the long term, however, the process of organizing may be as important as the immediate outcomes. This is why it matters whether the word gets out via fliers (a more laborious task) or hashtags (which lend themselves to decentralized organization), and whether meetings were held every day to organize a carpool, or whether a Google spreadsheet maintained by a few people was used.