that's just a few the authors you'll see this weekend on booktv on c-span2, television for serious readers. first up, zeynep tufecki author of "twitter and tear gas" examines the trajectories of modern protests. >> wonderful.

thank you everyone and welcome to tonight program. we are very pleased to have joining us this evening zeynep tufecki. she is a contributing opinion writer at the "new york times" as well as an assistant professor in the school of information and library science at the university of north carolina. and she's also the author of "twitter and tear gas" which is for sale after tonight program. and for those of you who are not familiar with world affairs, we are an organization that seeks to explore problems and expand opportunities at the intersection of international policy, philanthropy, and commerce were solutions to our problems lie. we are recording ten nights event with both c-span as well as for radio. so please do take a moment to silence your cell phones, and would like to thank the audio engineer who is joining us this

evening. you will notice we have a blue question cards on your seats so pleased to make use of them thought the program and writer programs that and i will bring them up to the moderator. given that will be talking about social media in tonight program we invite you all to get involved in our online conversation. you can use the hashtag world affairs live if you'd like to engage in online discussions. i would now like to introduce our moderator this evening. qiang xiao is an adjunct professor at the school of information at uc berkeley where he teaches a course on digital activism. he is also the founder and editor in chief of china digital times. we are delighted to have him here this evening, and so if you could all join me know in welcoming qiang xiao who will introduce tonight speaker. [applause] >> good evening. it's a pleasure to introduce our

guest. i'll try my best, zeynep tufecki. it's a contributing opinion writer and "new york times." we heard from anna. and what i am most amazed is that she has been published widely interactions about new technology, society, politics, culture. in this new book -- do have a book? "twitter and tear gas." of course she is also a fellow economic research person, assistant professor at school of information of library science, university of north carolina,

and she's also faculty associate at berkman center for internet and society at harvard. please join me to welcome zeynep tufecki. [applause] >> so our topic is really social media and the political mobilization, a topic that is very close to my own heart. zeynep, could you just share with us a little bit about yourself and how you came to write this book? because, not only because you're a scholar but also you have been engaging with the movement and you are from turkey. >> yes, yes, i am from turkey ai actually started out as a technology person. i started out as a program. so it happened as i grew up in turkey, istanbul mainly, in the period following a 1980 military

coup. i was a child, and the military coup, the post-coup era had very heavy censorship. we had one tv channel and it was also like even before we had one tv channel, and all you could watch was mostly american shows. we watched the house on the prairie. i have to tell you, it makes no sense if you're from istanbul. [laughing] because it's about the frontier, supposed to be in the middle of nowhere. and where i am from there is the middle of nowhere. you did, it's a part, you dig more there's another empire. unlike where are these people? and we would watch things like that. it made no sense to me, but what made sense for the people who control the tv was to show that instead of any kind of news because there was a major conflict in the southeast part of turkey with the kurdish minority. there were all these other things going on, you know, the

jails were full, so the military coup had this heavy censorship regime. i was always a kid who is interested in mad scientist i i thought i was going to be a synthesis. and then what happened and he was what happened to lots of kids to grow up thinking they will be synthesis, is you learn about the atom bomb edge of this atom bomb question, like, you're a kid and it seems like, and it is, this horrible annihilated technology. and i thought you know what, i want a job that i can do, i can do quickly. i want it to work for quickly and i thought i wanted a profession that i would enjoy that i would be connected to math and science, and that wouldn't have ethical implications. so i accidentally picked computers and computer programming. it turns out they have these ethical implications. >> i started physics as well. >> so when i became, starts with

a becoming a computer person. when i started working as a programmer, one of my early jobs, i think my second or third job as a programmer, but i'm very young, still a teenager, was working for ibm. i was supposed to have this project where the heady mainframe that was made before i was born. that was being used to localize a machine which ibm had. i can really -- i could never figure what to do with the peer ibm-had an internet which meant it was a little internal internet and had to there is no internet in turkey, right? 90s, early '90s, and all of a sudden i could just get on ibm internet and i would be like this is the thing and did figure, i don't know what to do. maybe somebody could japan would

say i wrote that here's how you do it. a couple things happen. i still had like one tv channel in heavy censorship. i also want a glimpse of global communication would be like. and also because i was still a teenager and like working at the company and does a lot -- >> istanbul? >> istanbul, yeah. who is this girl working your? actin things were more formal coming even among programs. but i had experienced the promise of internet as this place for people to know who you were and you could just talk. it's not like that anymore at all, right? but it was so liberating, and i thought this is going to change everything. and then the internet came to turkey and i was like, sign me up. so i signed up and i got really interested in how this could be used to break censorship, and i

wanted to study the social side so i switched my major. i studied sociology. i used my programming skills mostly to pay for college, and then i wanted to really come to the united states, partly because i thought that's where it's happening. i'm going to study all this and it will be so interesting. i got accepted to grad school without even knowing what grad school was, really because i just kind of, and i started to understand how this could change for positive social change. that's kind of my journey, started with the first moment i encountered with my online context was -- >> early. >> it's early, but a cop the tail end of it so i wasn't come i didn't get the beginning of it. i cut the tail end of it. i was so curious because i wanted to see things myself. i was like i'm going to go to those bounds and i'm going to find out how these people using the internet.

>> in mexico. >> right. one of the first things i realize was what people think is happening and what's happening are so different because there's all this discussion and hype about the internet and went to the mountain villages. they didn't have electricity let alone the internet. but what's happening was the networks that had formed and that just are using the internet had grabbed this new pledge, like this as a revolution and kind of had sort of taken it as a solidarity movement. but they were the ones using internet. instead of these indigenous peasants using the internet story we were hearing, i found something really different and it was my first glimpse into okay, this is really important. this changes everything because is important because it affords them a level of protection because of the places be.

it contemporaneous -- while this is so much attention on it. it wasn't happening the way the popular accounts were portraying what was happening. i found it very traditional indigenous peasant uprising. so that sort of got me started inking about all the things that the public is fear changing, then i followed that i chronicle in the book -- >> i read the book, right, so there is so much vivid stories and cases you put in an addition to the excellent theoretical framework. so that to me is your book, really stands out. let'.let's fast-forward. the early internet, the anti-globalization movement, and then arab spring. >> then turkey. so what happened is when the

arab spring, arab uprising started, i thought this is such a historic thing. and i went to come right? i'm the program so i can study they gave her i can study onlie but also really liked study both surveys and just being there. so i started following the arab spring and as it sort of blossomed and then started collapsing by both the repression and what happened with the movements, so as i was following it in my home country, in his temple there's major movement. and, in fact, it happened like three blocks from where i was born. if i was made to study a thing in the world, this is it, right? i jumped on a plane. i went there, and that's when i started sort of figuring out the analytic framework that you find in the book. because until then with every movement i was telling myself i case-by-case story.

i was saying occupy, it's in new york, a lot of u.s. characteristics, barcelona, a tradition anarchism so leaderless movement makes sense. so i was explaining a lot of the characters country by country pics of then when i saw the protest in a country that i know very well. i'm obviously from there, in the city that's my city. and i saw something that i've never seen in turkey before. this leaderless, euphoric, very occupation, no prior organization come from nowhere. and i thought this doesn't happen in turkey. this looks like the other movements i'm following, like this look so much, of course every country specific things so start thinking about how the political culture, and part of it is conversation but i started also thinking about there is a

framework to how technology afford, means an enables come is kind of allowing movements to do certain things in certain ways and impacting their trajectories. so that's kind of, the started, got me thinking about the book. and since then of course there's the other movements, hong kong. >> wonderful that you have this technology background. you came from a country with a censorship, and activism is part of growing up experiences. and then you studied in america and followed the movement not only intellectually but also physically. then you actively participated, then you came this book. but share with us what our the main things that indie book especially you quote so many examples, cases and arab spring particularly in turkey, we all

know, we are all being apart by technology here. everybody in the bay area knows technology. just a good thing? what if you learn? >> here's the framework. technology is absolutely empowering. because right now if you want to censor something is really hard. you can get on twitter, facebook, you can get the word out. look at the postelection united states. the women's march which was a really large of march was organized tarting with a facebook post. it went from facebook post 2 million people in the streets, couple months. of course the organizers did a lot of work, but, and here's the butt, there's a misleading sense of this apartment. it's not that it doesn't and power in some ways. change the conversation, get a rent censorship, organize a large march, right? technology can really help social media can really help do this.

but to understand why my book, is also the fragility, it introduces some weakness. let me put it this way. there are weaknesses to doing things this fast. think about climbing out everest. a lot of people want to climb mount everest because it's in their list of things that would like to do, and there's an industry that helps you climb mount everest. there are sherpas were local mountaineer people, they know how to climb mount everest and they will carry your stuff for you. they will carry your backpacks. they will carry extra oxygen. because if you're above 8000 feet, then there is a dangerous so they will carry oxygen. it all sounds great. you are empowered to climb mount everest, but the problem is you haven't really had the time to learn how to be a mountaineer. you've got the sherpas carrying all your stuff, right, and you get above a thousand feet. and if nothing goes wrong, great.

but oxygen tanks malfunction. the weather turns. there's some cueing because so many people are climbing and you get, you kind of have temperature issues. if you happen client came hours before and if you haven't learned how to be a mountaineer and you find yourself above 800f sherpas, you're in trouble. and, in fact, i started using this metaphor and right after i started using the metaphor, there were a lot of deaths on everest and i thought maybe i should stop using this metaphor. but then i thought a lot of my friends are in jail in egypt and elsewhere, so maybe it's an apt metaphor to the dangers. the problem is when you scale up from zero to 100 miles, facebook post to a big march, women's march, a million people maybe, maybe more, what you don't have, it looks like the kind of street

protests in the past, say martin washington 1963. but the march on washington 1963 took ten years to get there, right? so when you march like that you are not just marching. you built this infrastructure. so if you are in power you're looking at this people and you're thinking, if they can pull off this march, because it was easy to fall off. if they can pull off this march, the power they built, they can do other things. it's like being a real mountaineer. if you can climb k2 k2, anotherg mound, you can do other things. it's a capacity built over time. if you're using visual technology to scale up real fast it's a great thing if you recognize its the very first moment, but if you think it prepared you the same way years and years of building capacity infrastructure prepared you, your misled. that's what i find with a lot f movements today, including in the u.s. right now, is it that they see the huge margin they are thinking we can pull this off. and, of course, people have worked hard. i marched.

i watched. i saw people have put so much work in it, but three months of work will only build so much capacity. what you also don't have when you do this leaderless big thing is you don't have a means to do collective decision-making. you cannot change tactics. you go from the march, what's next? there's always a what's next. successful moves go from one thing to another as the time changes. a lot of these sort of network leaderless movement starts with a hashtag, haven't march. rape it what's next question. how are you going to decide this? you cannot decide on facebook. you cannot decide this on twitter because the commercial platforms are not design for decision-making. facebook has the setup and algorithms, and its decide to keep you on the site. i've been on facebook and i thought i just spent more time that i thought it would. it's designed to do that for you. he the whole structure is like

that. if you're in a meeting, what do you want to happen? you want it to end, right? a meeting, the thing you want most from meetings is for them to conclude. whereas the thing facebook is designed for is to keep either forever. that is not a platform you can just use to make decisions. a lot of these movements i feels, sometimes the internet is like springs in your feet. you are jumping very high. the problem is you don't have the muscles necessary to run fast. it's great if jumping is all you're going to do. big marches, we can do that. but the kind of infrastructure building tactical terms, movements needed in collective decision-making, not only does the internet not like scaling up very fast with digital technology not allow you to do that easily, and may even hinder you because not everybody has got a twitter account and everybody got a facebook account and everybody speaking how do we

make collective decisions at scale. those are things i think these movements are really weak at, so it's a very interesting combination. i can't say it hasn't empowered movement. it's empowered movement but also can't say it hasn't we can do this because in some ways if he didn't have all thi all the stau would have to do things sort of this longer way. and by the time you pulled off the march, you'd have had to build capacity. so that's kind of why the title is this -- >> and that's what this book as, to me, the value is also addressing both the strength and thweakness of those technology empowered movements today. let's even go further. i have so many questions. for example, we're talking about those instantaneously leaderless movement. you have them everywhere, america, turkey, middle east, hong kong, taiwan, you name it.

does technology only empower protesters? >> no. no, no. >> it empowers the state? >> it empowers the state in so many ways. so for example, when i grew up and when i found the internet, i thought since a ship one never really be a thing, right? this is great. we can circumvent the censorship blogs. we had these networks. which is not false. even to the state even with all the censorship technology, circumvention is widely practiced in people get around censorship. what i didn't anticipate with the early internet, which i see today is that if you can't break the link between information and people, what you can do is break the link between information and credibility. you can break the link between information and figuring out what's important. so you basically, the government

isn't terribly interested in keeping you from information. it's interested in keeping you from doing certain things, and they can confuse you, flood you with information, use misinformation as a deliberate tactic, use credibility challenges and claims of hoaxes and fraud so that people are confused or distracted or misinformed to the point that they don't know what to do. this is really empowering for governments because if you're a social movement if your social change you need to convince people certain things. where as if your government you just need to confuse them. or if you want to stop change, if everybody is like i don't really know what's true, and somebody says this and there's like 50 things and all these claims, and there's misinformation and fake news and all of that, i don't know what's going on, that's a very effective way to curtail and to

distract and to curtail the power of social movements. so if anything, like in many ways, the filter failure, information overload, that is so much going on that we couldn't really figure out what's going on, that newspapers so weakened and all those things are in many ways this empowering not just movements but they are also i think strengthening a new form of authoritarianism that can you social media also listen to the population without letting them have power and also to confuse them and misguide them. >> i'll just note, coming back to your insight of those kind of new technology doesn't really help, at least so far, the collective capacity of collective decision-making, right, et cetera. but let's observe, think about those movements. we see another thing which is

emotion playing a huge role in those protests. emotions contentious, spread fast, it brings people together, but it's hard to make a decision. >> yeah, right. so one of the things that, so there's a question in, that comes more from the economist and political scientists about why does anybody protest? why don't you just let other people protest, let them when and you get sort of whatever they win, you get a part of it, too, right? is called a free rider question. it sort of animate a lot of these discussions. and my answer is it's a very positive experience. protesting is, it's joyous. it's not joyce is there such server impression you're being shot at so that's not fun anymore, but if you're just, let's say why to guess as part of the title, if you're just being tear gassed, very annoying

to say the least. the first on your tear gassed you think you're going to die because speed have you been tear gas? >> oh, yeah. i'm a pro at this point. you think you're going to die because you can't breathe. it's a existential. having of the breeze, it's why waterboarding is a form of torture. you think it's -- but, of course, you don't come right? unless you have a severe condition, it doesn't kill you. tear gas cans shot at you may but the chair -- teargas itself. then you get really annoyed and her eyes are hurting. what you find is all these people who are with you, people pick you up, washer face and you just want to all this together. that kind of feeling of the people you don't know will like, they will come make sure you are okay.

and your with people who believe in something. you're part of something bigger than yourself. it is a form of, this is what i think protesters are empowering partly because you find people like that and you go through some a stressful, but existentially very rewarding. so people protest because it's joyce to protest. but as you say that itself doesn't lend itself without any structure to how do you decide what's next. >> right. someone once said i revoke, therefore we are. it went from me to we. >> absolutely. this is sort of come you find, if you, the french revolution, you can read the poems, the role of emotion in sort of the fraternities, sisterhood come all of those things and protest movement. it's very powerful thing. martin luther king called it the

beloved community. >> we all remember the historical moment because revolutions are spectacular and the changes history. and also the issue is here is how do you get there is one thing? also those movement is either, or nothing. everything or nothing. it's hard to negotiate, to be tactical, to be strategic and to compromise. these necessary capacity in a political struggle. those movement are lacking. please ever operate -- elaborate more. >> is a part of movements on the left side of the spectrum. it's corrupting. you'll be corrupted. all of which is true, right? if you get in your power, it is corrupting and co-opting.

on the other hand, if you don't get new power, power can crush yupik so it's not like you are saved either way. but what happens is a lot of movements especially on the left side of the spectrum or even in u.s. like occupy, they are very ambivalent in engaging institutions of power to change them. because they want, that you should want to create these alternative prefiguration. >> you want to sort of live a part of the future they wish was here, except it has a sustained. you can only do so much because the power is encompassing you. i'll give you a different example to explain there are different paths. at the tea party movement, it gets not steady as much. it's a mistake. it's one of the most successful movements and last 20, 30 years. i think if you look at the united states last 20 years, you would say they gay rights movement and the tea party movement in their own way are probably the two most successful movements.

so the tea party movement starts with protest. it starts as a protest on april 2009 on tax day. there's a really nice paper looking at, it's a national protest all over the u.s., looking at where they were able to hold the protests because the weather was sunny, and where they got rained out. it's a perfect natural experiment because rain is random. so when you look at that, the places that are able to hold a protest, years later, they of all these downstream effects. incumbent more likely to retire, a tea party candidate more likely to be elected. if you the same congressperson, they are more likely to vote in accordance with tea party priorities, obviously they are afraid of being primary did. you don't see the same effect and places that got rained out. it's clearly the protest was one of the coalescing moments for

this movement. but here's the difference. after they get together the tea party protesters turn into, two things happen. they did get external funding. we will talk about that. one of the things in the tea party movement that stands out whenever you study and is they were very much oriented toward how do we take power, how to intervene in legislation. so they were misinformed about this or that, but they were so informed about the political process that the researchers were lik like you people are lie political scientist. they know how to block something, how do you stop a lot from passing, how would you primary someone. they were really good at that part of the thing. and they also got external funding from interested rich donors that were like all right, let's build infrastructure. so you have these two things.

so they primary these people they don't like. they pulled the whole republican party because they're afraid of being primary did. they got about 50 people elected to congress, created a caucus. pretty effectively blocked second term of barack obama. and if you look at the tea party research, their bases not like republican paul ryan baster they are a lot more like chump in a political views. this is something that's misunderstood of academic research is pretty clear there's a direct line from a tea party movement to trump's election if you look at the politics of what the base believed in. so the argument elected a president so you have a movement that has succeeded by any measure and so it was like the movement was a lot more strategic in some ways and a lot more political classic unfunded. let's look at occupy and i will come will go to questions. occupy, maybe more widespread, right? the thing to talk about

inequality absolutely resident. did they change the conversation? completely. inequality came to be part of the conversation. what are the things that movement did not do? did they primary anyone? no. wiser congressional people that elected? did this get the democrats into adopting some of the things? no. you see them kind of show up by the time the 2016 election comes up. they kind of have a candidate with sanders, but by then it 2016 we're talking so they did have all of those things. also if you want to look at there's this imbalance between movement capacity building on the left side and the right side. if you look at the koch brothers, which people talk about. they are on the republican side and a fight infrastructure. in 2016 they spent about 1 billion with a beat. they spent about a billion dollars on down ballot races alone. that's infrastructure. that's capacity building.

it doesn't matter if you win big you are building the infrastructure. that's a billion. supposed 2017 there's this huge movement in the united states that's called the self resistance sometimes. they have big marches. one of its offshoots is the indivisible which is sort of trying to organize congressional district by congressional district. it's kind of the equivalent if you will in the political spectrum of what happened with the tea party. their current funding is $1.6 million, and a million of the system grassroots. so you literally have to summer movements, and one of them gets together and is like how do we change power, had we get to it, and you see this path to presence. this other one springs up after surprise election and it looks very powerful. there's a lot of people in the streets, a lot of stuff going on, but if you look at the capacity building, they are not

even at 1% of 2006 spending of one donor on the other side of the political spectrum. and at some point, i'm not saying that money does everything for you. they have great grassroots energy and there's all these people working someone isn't everything, but capacity building is that something that is independent out of the resources you put into it. so the grassroots energy can do a lot much also have to be oriented and after the resource. you see what i'm saying? they are both using technology, both organizing, both using online things but very different trajectories in where things are going. >> so thank you, and we have more questions from the floor. i'll start with the first one. what are some examples you have seen that successfully integrate old tradition at the digital message of campaign organizations? and what lessons can be taken from the?

>> i kind of answered, but the thing is if you're in 2017 of course you're going to use digital technology for with a good four. the point isn't street protest versus online, because there's a magical street protest either. there's no magic to anything movement does besides capacity building and that capacity can be narrative, which is you change the conversation, you change the framework. the capacity can be disruptive. civil disobedience, you refuse to go along. they can be powerful. or the capacity building and engaging electoral or institutional settings. those are the three big pillars of capacity building, movements do. what success movement do is you don't focus on, i mean, if you need to hold a march you do a march. it's good for many things. if you want use facebook groups, great. you can do lots of things with it. you have to sort not think as the march as your goal project to thank as a successful movie

what is the capacity i'm signaling? i think a good example is think if you were in power and you saw this, what would scare you? i think that's a very good way. for example, constituents scare congress people. because they they might be primary organ might be voted out. they really care about their job. phone calls used to scare them a lot because it signals some capacity. now you have all these things that automated. you go and put your code enter automatically connects. phone calls, they dismiss them as robocall think they're not convinced it's constituents. here once again the problem isn't doing phone calls as wrong. call your legislator by all means. the problem is if something is made easier, it's no longer signaling the same threat. so if you're a movement strategist yet to think what is the sort of not whether chemie

holding march, it is when we do this, what are we telling them what else we can do. right? it's kind of like if you can climb k2, i really tough mountain, it's kind o of the sie are good mountaineer. so i'm going to vet who's going to climb mount everest, if somebody has climbed k2, i'm like that's a lot more likely. if you do something that is difficult agosta whatever the weaknesses of what you're protesting are, and it depends on, sort of if you're trying to change congress, his congressional district. if you're trying to do something else, it could be something. you have to figure out your movement repertoire say basically enough capacity to tell the person, institution that come you know what, the thing i'm doing has teeth. and you should be afraid of this. that's when you get social change. people either respond to it or they give into it or you get new

people in with your capacity. >> i'd like to follow a little bit on this, to elaborate. when you say signal and capacity, now i'm thinking we're talking political communication. and then we sometimes miss, mix of getting together the digital era. we're talking revolution, throughout the government. or not necessarily, we are also talk about changing policy, making a new law or changing te law. or we can even talk about before that, changing the store or conversation changing peoples mind. these are different levels of political communication. can you give example of one of those different levels, how does the capacity -- >> sure. so for example, a lot of times the internet gets dismissed -- i don't like the term at all. digital technology is great for changing the narrative. >> narrative. >> and a scraper changing peoples minds.

and that's the bedrock of social change. if you want to look for an example, they gay-rights movement and the united states has been very good at using cultural tools to make a case for itself for equality, right? and when you see people change, there was a trend of facebook called coverage years ago people would change their profile picture the rainbow colors to signal their support for marriage equality are gave people. that's a powerful thing because it's not just like a click figure also signaling to all your friends this is where you stand. you are making a political statement. in some cases, like say tweeting in china, it may just be a click but it's really great thing. a lot of times it truly powerful. the reason i can't emphasized what are the weaknesses part is that i think we've heard so much

about the empowerment side that were missing all of this. but it is not at all, like i'm not a curmudgeon in saint don't use them. not at all. they are very empowering. the other 90 joint organize the logistical march, for 1963 date index cards and had six months to do a lot of things pick right now you have google spreadsheets. that has real, that is a kind of empowerment. it just doesn't come as an and alloyed good. it comes with these side effects and some downside and some other speedy it's probably more than side effects. >> its integrated. >> it's very important that you mentioned looking at weakness of technology and power, the political landscape. because it's not just a theoretical sort of logical discussion to look at today's world including this country. yes, we got empowered by technology but yes,

authoritarianism is rising ever. how did that happen? >> so basically i think what happened is a lot of movement that were really, so let me give a san francisco example since we're in san francisco. instagram was a little company i got really big very quickly. i got i think like 100 million users very quickly and only with 11 engineers. you just skilled up very fast. you are just 11 engineers. something similar happen to what sap. they had like maybe a dozen people are some very small number. i don't member the exact number for them. instagram got snapped up by facebook for a billion and what's up for about 16 billion. those are large numbers. so when you scale up that quickly by, when you scale up that quickly and if you're a startup, there is venture capitalists or facebook, to get

you. when you scale up that quickly as a movement, what you are actually doing is, yes, your scaling up but your phasing your biggest challenge because you just burst onto the scene. there you are as this big thing. with a target painted on you. facebook is not coming to by you. i government is coming to crush you, right? so a lot of these movements by skating up so fast, in fact, are making themselves both known and very vulnerable at a very early stage. there is probably no way around this if this is what it is. you have a movement spring up, but part of the thing is that i try to explain in the book is that understanding this is probably path for a movement to say how do i protect myself against it. what the big weaknesses, this will sound like a minor thing but it's not. what other big weaknesses is

when you scale up so fast and so quickly, and in the government is coming for them, they need to switch tactics pretty quickly because you did something and now you're facing either repression of pressure or expectations. since they went from zero to 10s without decision-making, the leadership that is de facto but that's not like elected starts feeling like, they start feeling the seas, like deer in headlights because they need decisions. what's next? where do we go? but they haven't been elected as leaders. they haven't been formal or informal leaders but they are to factor. i have of followers on twitter so you have these people emerge as the factor spokespeople. but if you're someone in a movement and you don't like what that de facto emergent movement leader is saying, you have no formal way or injured away a challenging them. so you go on twitter and start

arguing with them. and this kind of internal tension at the first three months, first year, post big march, i've seen this in pretty much every movement i studied, is that they get big very quickly and then there's this sort of pressure on them either repression or what's next. you have de facto leaders, turns out they have neither the capacity to say all right, you do this, as nobody is listening to them that much, but they get challenged a lot. the movement starts splintering into sort of these little green pieces and they start trying to replicate the same thing again and again and again. last i checked there was i thik a call for 15 or 20 more marches on my facebook feed. i'm not against marches. it's fine, but there's a way in which that reflective not of a

considered decision that another march is a good thing, but more like we don't have the way to figure out what else to do, so what is going to repeat the cycle. and what happens is you do your eighth of march and its smaller because at some point it's not the same thing, and also tactics kanab were picked it doesn't get the same attention to it doesn't have the same thing. if you're a person power you think let the march, they are not in my district. and then boom, what's going to happen in the case of this country, for example, is that there's a 2008 election as a major turning point, right? is a some strategic thinking that connexus movement to say that strategic turning point. so the tactical freeze creates, partly because you are doing all this conversation and time to make decisions on social media. and as i say it's not suited to it. facebook is a platform that's

designed to capture your attention and sell it to advertisers. it's up there to sort of grab your attention. it's very good for outrage or cuddly things. there's like these things it's good for. it can be full of misinformation at times. it can be great. they can be empowering that it's not a collective decision-making platform. and so the movement, the rest of the trajectory is that there's a tactical freeze, repetition of all tactics, internal tensions, and in some cases, like in egypt the was a coup edges huge amount amount of repression. it plausibly never had a chance. given the stakes are, in some of the countries a kind of fizzles out. occupy kind of did. we will see what happens in the united states. so that's kind of the -- >> yeah. but regardless, it is a fact,

right, today most political movements, social movements appeared this way, leaderless and, there's a question from the floor. in what way sometime is a leaderless social movement pattern that and more structured movement? >> absolutely. these movements are not leaderless for no reason. if you went the 1960s and bread the port of iran statement which was a statement put out y the people who would form the students for democratic society and pretty much the backbone of the student movement, it sounds like today people are, they want voice. they want participation. they do not want the membership thing where all your asses give me money. if you suffering movement today you start getting e-mails like for more money. this is not what you were signed up for. they change things. they are afraid pretty correctly that if they sort of have a look

very rigid leadership structure, the voice won't be heard. they are afraid the lead will be corrupted. that would be co-opted pick in some cases killed. it happens to movement. so leadership has all these genuine issues. part of thing we talked about is the reason you want to participate in the movement is to be empowered. so in the midst of the first uprising in january 2011, the creator of the facebook page that helped organize a protest in egypt, january 25, 1st he was arrested. they didn't know they had them and they realized it was him, and there's a place in which he gets like taken to the palace with some other student leader who had organize a lot of things. and there you can see they're trying to see what would it take for you to call the people back.

they don't say it like that, and it's pretty clear there's nothing he can do because he's not the leader. a leaderless movement is resilient in many ways. there is no one leader you can co-opt and stop the movement. a leaderless movement can be creative because you all this energy coming from, because a lot of times in a bit of tactics, they don't come from the top. they come from the bottom. so the challenge it isn't how do we stuff people into old hierarchical structures. and i try to be clear in the book. like that's not what i'm saying. the challenge is how to take this participatory energy, this new model, this more networked participatory, joyous, expensive thing, but how did you match that with decision-making capacity in a new form, right? a form that respects the participatory sensibility so the

people are not feeling like there will is being stolen from them, so that the movement can move from step to step in if you try to say all right, we'll just about salute and you listen, people wouldn't do it. they are in the movement to be empowered, not to be taken away. so my argument is not at all the leaderless thing is horrible. it is that it is all these positive things and there's a reason it existed even if you didn't like it, it's not going away because there's a very solid cultural political reasons. but the way it's been practiced has meant that is like a three legged stool and you've got a couple, like you have got to really strong ones that say but one of them is missing so how do you think about that one? >> also i would add many of those movements are leaderless, but it doesn't mean they don't have an icon or spokesperson. >> they do. often you will have some human face doing that kind of work. >> the problem is that person is

not necessarily empowered to speak for the movement, but they end up. so like the man i talked about, sort of the founder of the page, he found himself in that preposition. he found itself as a spokesperson but people started challenging them so much on lyin' ted went on social media for two years. that tension was so hard on him. if he had been more formally empowered he would at least know what -- >> so here's probably this, we are near the end of questions. your two examples, meaning tea party and gay rights of social mobilization movement, that successfully employed social media, u.s.-based. do you see prospects for success among the movement and authoritarian regime. if so, why? >> it's a very interesting question. authoritarian regimes tend to

fall very quickly and out of nowhere because very often they don't have buy-in from the population. like the elections might not be great for everything, but they acted for signaling what people really don't like, and there's some course correction whereas authoritarian regimes tend to get blindsided. so for example, in 1970 you see tons of people saying you're on, stable a as a rock. the 1979, whom. that's a very common pattern with authoritarian regimes. to sort of fall very quickly. i don't really, it's a fools game to predict exactly when and which one because the problem of lack of knowledge is true for the observer. but i will say one thing. it is plausible to me that especially china is more stable as an authoritarian regime because of social media. you might think they are censoring everything. you wouldn't, but the ordinary

person thinks of the great chinese firewall and thinks it's censoring everything. but as you know there's a very lively internal social media, and it's hundreds of names of people. it's plausible to me that it's a way for them to understand how much discontent there is using sentiment analysis, big dave and all the things they used to understand you. so maybe the one thing that keeps knocking authoritarian regimes down, which is being blindsided by popular discontent, this might be a way out for them to sort of figure out exactly how bad things are, and they may come more stable. on the other hand, the amount of censorship they do have to implement, the amount of sort of efforts to contain collective action being organized tells you

that if it starts they know it could just sort of crumble quickly. i'm not going to make a prediction, but i think that a fascinating aspect of both empowering those in power. these things can happen, those things are very combustible mixture. >> of course i'm from china's i'm personally interested in question such as how the technology empowerment movement transforms political structure and those authoritarian regimes. asked why ask the question, does technology also empower the state, particularly authoritarian states. that's what i'm asking why the authoritarianism as a matter fact, are on the rise in the world. >> that's exactly right. you have social movements are being poorly empowered but on the other hand, authoritarian

news is put on the rise. and i think that's partly because our old ways of ruling and old institutions are under great fire. newspapers are being defended her local news is decimated. those are crucial things. but we do not have new institutions yet. we don't have like movements don't have new ways of decision-making. we don't have new ways of fighting misinformation. there's all these transitions where the challengers haven't really figured out building a new things were as old methods aren't really working. and as you just said, it does empower the people in power. there's all these available to them now. fascinating transition. >> there's another aspect. in a democratic society at least more incremental political aims can be achieved such as electing a candidate.

but in authoritarian regime for often or nothing or nothing. either revolution or you don't anywhere. you will be crushed. then even the technology empowerment movement, particularly doesn't have this process of capacity building over the time. >> because, yeah. >> right. we may all we see those turning points, the tipping point. but before that it could be years, could be dozens of years. >> the air spring took everybody by surprise. the iranian revolution took everybody by surprise. gezi park revolution took everybody by surprise. i think that's just in the nature of things is you have this thing, this delicate balance. it's going to tip, but it's kind of a fools game to predict exactly when. but when does it it tends to be a cascade. >> the casket only happens when environment is ready but how the

five is ready is, it's not just about technology itself. >> absolutely. >> well, thank you. >> thank you for a good conversation. >> yeah. [applause] >> and i just want to make sure that the book, books are here and zeynep consigns them, so please, look into this wonderful book. >> take you so much. that was a great conversation. thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> booktv recently visited capitol hill to ask members of congress what they are reading this summer.

>> what are you reading this summer? >> is the life and times of robert kennedy. robert kennedy was a new senator. an incredible book about bobby kennedys life, political life, the history of his family and it is an enjoyable read. >> booktv wants to know what you are reading. .. [inaudible conversations]