Zeynep Tufekci

Not This One: Social Movements, the Attention Economy, and Microcelebrity Networked Activism

The emergent new media ecology which integrates participatory media into the structure of global information flows has fundamentally affected the means of production and distribution of attention, a key resource for social movements. In social movement scholarship, attention itself is rarely examined directly; rather, it is encountered in the study of means of delivering attention such as mass media or celebrities. This conflation of the resource, attention, and the pathways to acquire it, such as mass media, was less of an analytic problem when mass media enjoyed a near monopoly on public attention. However, the paths connecting movement actors and public attention are increasingly multiplex and include civic and social media. In this article, I examine the concept of attention as a distinct analytic category, reevaluate social movement scholarship in light of weakening of the monopoly on public attention, and introduce and examine a novel dynamic brought about by emergent attention economy: networked microcelebrity activism. I examine this novel dynamic through case studies and raise questions for future exploration.

Introduction to the Special Issue on New Media and Social Unrest

Scholarship addressing the impact of digital technologies on social movements, political unrest, states, and civil society has reached a turning point. Compared with the early days—just a decade ago—when scholars started cautiously exploring the potential impact of these emergent technologies, the past 2 years have seen a flood of cases against which these initial ideas and explorations can be examined empirically and conceptually. From the ongoing Arab uprisings in the Middle East and the North Africa region to the Occupy protests in the United States, from the Spanish Indignados movement of 2011 and 2012 to the turmoil around Wikileaks and Anonymous, many corners of the world have been affected by protests and social movements that have integrated the new tools of connectivity, information diffusion, and attention into their tactical repertoire of activism. In this special issue, we bring together a varied and complex set of articles that probe some of the many complex ways that emergent digital technologies have played a role in social unrest and politics around the world. With a decidedly global focus and a conceptually and methodologically rich toolkit, the authors seek to provide us with crucial perspectives on how digital technologies are altering politics, policy, and civics. These articles bring us both new analyses of recent events as well as fresh means of conceptually examining recent theories and speculations on the potential range of impacts of information technologies. These articles proceed beyond the simplistic questions that dominate mainstream debate about online politics to reveal complex, multilayered, and contingent effects. As they make clear, it no longer makes sense to ask if digital technologies will exercise influence; rather, we can and should be looking at how and, also crucially, through which mechanisms. It also makes little sense to ask if “the revolution will be tweeted”—the answer is yes, since Twitter and similar technologies are now integral components of the

Algorithms in our Midst: Information, Power and Choice when Software is Everywhere

Our personal, financial and civic interactions are increasingly digitally mediated, and more and more objects come embedded with chips and sensors. As a result, a new layer of power has arisen: that of the algorithm. Software-human-constructed, often invisible and progressively pervasive-not only mediates our lives, it is increasingly used to make decisions in a diverse group areas ranging from sociality to employment to health to relationships. While automations social, political and economic impacts have long been debated, there is now a new layer that requires consideration: algorithms, often aided by big data, now make decisions in subjective realms where there is no right decision, and no anchor with which to judge outcomes. What is good? What is relevant? What is important? Who is right? What is desirable? What is valuable? These questions with philosophical roots that go to beginning of civilization are now turned over to algorithms that bring about a new set of structural biases and issues. This new phase in pervasive computing raises significant questions and challenges, and important areas of research.