Gezi Park Protests & the Boom-Bust Cycle of Social Media-Fueled Protest

Zeynep Tufekci @zeynep

Internet and Collective Action

• So far, often emphasized:• Lower coordination costs• Attention and publicity• Shaping of narrative• Overcoming pluralistic ignorance

• Criticisms:• Slacktivism• Surveillance• Censorship & propaganda

Big Questions for Movements

• Why do people protest?• Free rider problem?• Resources?

• Do protests matter?• Political opportunity structures?• Political mediation?

Common Themes of Analysis

•Does activism count if it is not about «the streets...»•Was it Facebook [Twitte/Skype] or

was it the people?

My Proposal:

• Stop looking so much at outputs of social-media fueled protests, start looking at their role in capacity building.

• Stop using online/offline as the axis of analysis, start looking at protests as one form of signaling, among many.

Gezi, a short history

Once upon a time, there was this:

And it was a lonely bit of green

And Prime Minister Erdogan wanted to turn it into this:

Some people, mostly from the neighborhood, did not like this.

Then, this happened to their small protest

Some people thought it was a sign of this:

Meanwhile government friendly TVs (almost all of them) broadcast this:

So people got upset and took to Twitter and to the streets

After multi-day clashes in the area, coordinated and spread almost solely

on social media...

...Gezi Park was occupied!

So, I packed up my gear

And went to Gezi Park to interview & observe...

Gezi Context• 11-year single party reign• Polarized country• Ineffective opposition• Barriers to new opposition (electoral system)• Fears of growing outreach and authoritarianism

Findings: Smurf Village!

Occasionally, Gargamel visits

Woodstock meets Paris Commune

«One No, Many Yes»es

Heterogeneous Coalition

Free Rider What?

Costs were real

Costs were paid

Grievances, as voiced by Gezi occupiers:•Growing authoritarianism•Media censorship•Police brutality

Internet’s Role

I. Break Media CensorshipII. Construct Counter-narrativeIII. Logistics and Coordination

I. Break media censorship

I. Media, Media• Add pic of fridge turning into TV

I. Media, Media

I. Media, media

I. Social Media

I. Twitter

II. Protest Coordination & Internet• Significant real time coordination• For the most part, internet worked• Local businesses turned on Wi-Fi• Internet modems • Text to others who then tweeted•Walk to place with internet

II. Counter Narrative Construction• Youth/internet culture•Humor oriented• Spread on/through/ social media•Very much on display in Gezi itself

Leadership

•Much was coordinated without much centralization•No central leadership with delegation

authority--though a meta-organization (Taksim Solidarity) was formed, it often followed, not led, what was happening.

Gezi Dispersed• Brutal dispersion• Moves to neighborhood forums

Neihborhood Forums

Impact?• To understand impact (and the boom-bust cycle of social

media-fueled protests) first let look at capacity building as a concept, and then to capacities built and made less necessary by Internet affordances.

Capacity Building• Amatyra Sen introduces into development economics• Look at capacity, not outputs as key variable• For example, instead of GDP look at literacy or heath--health is

capacity to do things as well as an output. • What can/what are people empowered to do?

Internet and Capacity Building

• Internet adds new capacities but also undermines others (often by rendering them less necessary)• Thus, Internet’s impressive capacity building in some

aspects is matched with capacity destruction/negligence in others• And that helps explain the trajectories of social-media

fueled movements—overgrown capacities in some aspects (logistics coordination), trophied, neglected capacities in others that were, sometimes,side-effects of capacity building for things that are no longer needed.

Protests: Conceptual Notes

•Dampen online/offline conceptually (but do NOT forget in affordances—bits and atoms ARE different, the new ecology is different)•Also, separate «citizenship» protests

(civil rights, or those in authoritarian countries) and «post-citizenship» protests (Occupy, M15, and, to a large degree, Gezi)

What Do Protests Need?

•Resource Mobilization: Need resources for protest call, coordination, organization

•Political Opportunity Structures: An moment in political structure that creates perceived opening

Capacity Building in Protest Resources• Internet Enables lower, much lower

barriers of necessary resources for protest:• Protesters are easier to call for, organize, and support

logistically• Protest online (hashtag campaigns, petitions, etc) even

lower• Protest offline also can arise semi-spontaneously and be

managed in ways that would have been almost impossible before.

• Need for central authority, infrastructure etc. less necessary, almost optional

Capacity Building in Political Opportunity Structure• Political Opportunity Structures Depend on

Perception and Agency • Social Movements Can Create Political Opportunity

Structures... See the Tea Party (Have we defaulted yet?)

What Do Protests Do?

1. They Grab Attention• Highlight cause, grievances• Put forth narrative/counter narrative

2. They Promote Social Interaction among protesters• Homophily building• Meet, greet, bond for future (especially in face of repression)

3. They Reveal Information• «I’m not the only one»• Break pluralistic ignorance

4. They Signal• Protests signal capacity• «We are here and we have capacity for dissent»

My thesis:

• Internet altered the relationship between what protests need(ed) to exist, and thus had to built the capacity for, and what movements need for impact. • In the Internet era, protests don’t

operate the same way & don’t «signal» the same way as pre-Internet.

1. Attention Capacity

• Internet builds capacity for obtaining attention, a key resource if not the key resource for social movements, without media dependency•Media dependency brought distortion,

selective representation, counter propaganda, censorship•But it also brought dominance, focus and

singular narrative

1. Attention Capacity

• Media attention often signaled elite dissent & buy-in• Nixon: «If I lost Walter Cronkite, I lost Middle

America»• Right now, movements can get attention, on

their terms, but CANNOT get a singular or dominant narrative.• Since there is no single «elite» voice, there is no

reliable way to signal «elite dissent» (Except maybe the stock market—see government shutdown).

1. Attention Capacity

• Hashtag campaigns, thus, are similar to offline protests—they are a grab for attention.• The key isn’t necessarily online versus offline—

the key is ability to garner attention. • Media has certain structures of awarding

attention, something «easier» can be better at attention.• For example: Komen vs Planned Parenthood.

1. Attention Capacity

•Win: Increased Tactical Capacity to Grab Attention• Loss: Increased Attention in Environmen t

Where Dominance of Narrative is Impossible.•More movements can get attention,

none of them can reach as high as they could before. Lower plateau, lower singular focus.

2. Social Interaction Capacity• Much, much more ability for social interaction among the

aggrieved• Can be stronger than social interaction that depended on face-

to-face meeting because can be farther flung, or find your mates

• Internet is a homophily machine• Online interaction promotes offline interaction, mutually

constitutive process

2. Social Interaction Capacity• More movements... Of many kinds• Anti-Vaccination movement• Middle East & North Africa Activists before January 25

• Global Voices• Tea Party and Tax Day 2010

2. Social Interaction Capacity• Win: Much, much more. Many more, stronger movements.• Loss: Much, much more. Many more, stronger movements.

• In other words, much competition, many counter-publics, for good or bad.

3. Information Revelation• Break Pluralistic Ignorance• The initial «Arab Spring» • Gezi: «I thought I was the only one»• «I’m not the only one who felt so bothered»

• Bandwagon or Cascade effects

3. Information Revelation• Win for movement impact: Pluralistic Ignorance as a Ruling

Mechanism is on the way out.• Loss for movement impact: New/updated responses, of

course, are happening.

4. Signaling: Protests as «Stotting»

You can’t catch me!

What does the «jump» signal?

Old Style Protest• Signaled capacity to organize• Signaled infrastructure• Now it only signals aggrieved groups

Not the same!

Network Internalities• Capacity building that comes through network and

infrasturcture building• Network internalities for social-media fueled protests are

weaker!• Hence, a local optima (protest with less infrastructure) is at

odds with later potential goal (sustained dissent with capacity to inflict cost on authority

Network Internalities...• Operate differently on left and right• Left internalizes, celebrates not building network internalities

because it sidesteps important tensions. (Leadership, negotiation, representation and delegation which are long-term issues with dissent from the left).

• Side-stepping those tensions means that the day after the street protests is more unclear and muddy for the left

Hence, why many movements are stuck at no!• Protest coordinated by social media• No need to develop capacity for representation• Disappointment with electoral and delegative processes• Protest demand can only be coalesced into the one thing that

started the protest. Mubarak resign. Keep Gezi. Or, in case of Occupy, remain vague and fizzle out.

To sum up!

Long standing cultural and political trends, especially on the left, have coincided with the rise of social media which allows differential capacity building for protest, and avoiding building capacity to undertake the protest which then turned into structures of representation, pressure and delegation. Hence, enhanced ability to protest is accompanied by weakened ability to impact.

Boom-Bust!

Thank you!• Questions?• @zeynep• Or zeynep@technosociology.org