Zeynep Tufekci: How the Internet has made social change easy to organize, hard to win

139,062 views ・ 2015-02-02

TED


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

00:12
So recently, we heard a lot about how social media helps empower protest,
0
12996
4806
00:17
and that's true,
1
17802
1379
00:19
but after more than a decade
2
19181
1655
00:20
of studying and participating in multiple social movements,
3
20836
3665
00:24
I've come to realize
4
24501
1802
00:26
that the way technology empowers social movements
5
26303
3311
00:29
can also paradoxically help weaken them.
6
29614
3106
00:32
This is not inevitable, but overcoming it requires diving deep
7
32720
3884
00:36
into what makes success possible over the long term.
8
36604
4293
00:40
And the lessons apply in multiple domains.
9
40897
2561
00:43
Now, take Turkey's Gezi Park protests, July 2013,
10
43458
3995
00:47
which I went back to study in the field.
11
47453
3037
00:50
Twitter was key to its organizing.
12
50490
2453
00:52
It was everywhere in the park -- well, along with a lot of tear gas.
13
52943
3394
00:56
It wasn't all high tech.
14
56337
1838
00:58
But the people in Turkey had already gotten used to the power of Twitter
15
58175
3878
01:02
because of an unfortunate incident about a year before
16
62053
3940
01:05
when military jets had bombed and killed
17
65994
3791
01:09
34 Kurdish smugglers near the border region,
18
69785
4089
01:13
and Turkish media completely censored this news.
19
73874
4744
01:18
Editors sat in their newsrooms
20
78618
1838
01:20
and waited for the government to tell them what to do.
21
80456
2899
01:23
One frustrated journalist could not take this anymore.
22
83355
2600
01:25
He purchased his own plane ticket,
23
85955
1690
01:27
and went to the village where this had occurred.
24
87645
2312
01:29
And he was confronted by this scene:
25
89957
2666
01:32
a line of coffins coming down a hill, relatives wailing.
26
92623
5398
01:38
He later he told me how overwhelmed he felt,
27
98021
2441
01:40
and didn't know what to do,
28
100462
1721
01:42
so he took out his phone,
29
102183
1973
01:44
like any one of us might,
30
104156
1768
01:45
and snapped that picture and tweeted it out.
31
105924
3198
01:49
And voila, that picture went viral
32
109122
3727
01:52
and broke the censorship and forced mass media to cover it.
33
112849
4388
01:57
So when, a year later, Turkey's Gezi protests happened,
34
117237
3181
02:00
it started as a protest about a park being razed,
35
120418
2722
02:03
but became an anti-authoritarian protest.
36
123140
2303
02:05
It wasn't surprising that media also censored it,
37
125443
4158
02:09
but it got a little ridiculous at times.
38
129601
2932
02:12
When things were so intense,
39
132533
2070
02:14
when CNN International was broadcasting live from Istanbul,
40
134603
4395
02:18
CNN Turkey instead was broadcasting a documentary on penguins.
41
138998
6350
02:25
Now, I love penguin documentaries, but that wasn't the news of the day.
42
145351
4583
02:29
An angry viewer put his two screens together and snapped that picture,
43
149934
4297
02:34
and that one too went viral,
44
154231
1867
02:36
and since then, people call Turkish media the penguin media. (Laughter)
45
156098
4488
02:40
But this time, people knew what to do.
46
160586
2165
02:42
They just took out their phones and looked for actual news.
47
162751
2959
02:45
Better, they knew to go to the park and take pictures and participate
48
165710
4464
02:50
and share it more on social media.
49
170174
1951
02:52
Digital connectivity was used for everything from food to donations.
50
172125
6550
02:58
Everything was organized partially with the help of these new technologies.
51
178675
5272
03:03
And using Internet to mobilize and publicize protests
52
183947
4206
03:08
actually goes back a long way.
53
188153
2456
03:10
Remember the Zapatistas,
54
190609
1845
03:12
the peasant uprising in the southern Chiapas region of Mexico
55
192454
4635
03:17
led by the masked, pipe-smoking, charismatic Subcomandante Marcos?
56
197089
5631
03:22
That was probably the first movement
57
202720
1879
03:24
that got global attention thanks to the Internet.
58
204599
2371
03:27
Or consider Seattle '99,
59
207690
1648
03:29
when a multinational grassroots effort brought global attention
60
209338
4803
03:34
to what was then an obscure organization, the World Trade Organization,
61
214141
4685
03:38
by also utilizing these digital technologies to help them organize.
62
218826
4541
03:43
And more recently, movement after movement
63
223367
2535
03:45
has shaken country after country:
64
225902
2838
03:48
the Arab uprisings from Bahrain to Tunisia to Egypt and more;
65
228740
5132
03:53
indignados in Spain, Italy, Greece; the Gezi Park protests;
66
233872
4872
03:58
Taiwan; Euromaidan in Ukraine; Hong Kong.
67
238744
4224
04:02
And think of more recent initiatives, like the #BringBackOurGirls hashtags.
68
242968
4712
04:07
Nowadays, a network of tweets can unleash a global awareness campaign.
69
247680
6856
04:14
A Facebook page can become the hub of a massive mobilization.
70
254536
3918
04:18
Amazing.
71
258454
1770
04:20
But think of the moments I just mentioned.
72
260224
4314
04:24
The achievements they were able to have, their outcomes,
73
264538
4665
04:29
are not really proportional to the size and energy they inspired.
74
269203
4810
04:34
The hopes they rightfully raised are not really matched
75
274013
4021
04:38
by what they were able to have as a result in the end.
76
278034
4468
04:42
And this raises a question:
77
282502
2412
04:46
As digital technology makes things easier for movements,
78
286204
4225
04:50
why haven't successful outcomes become more likely as well?
79
290429
4023
04:54
In embracing digital platforms for activism and politics,
80
294452
5565
05:00
are we overlooking some of the benefits of doing things the hard way?
81
300017
4234
05:04
Now, I believe so.
82
304251
1217
05:05
I believe that the rule of thumb is:
83
305468
1805
05:07
Easier to mobilize does not always mean easier to achieve gains.
84
307273
4727
05:12
Now, to be clear,
85
312610
2893
05:15
technology does empower in multiple ways.
86
315503
2854
05:18
It's very powerful.
87
318357
1460
05:19
In Turkey, I watched four young college students
88
319817
4046
05:23
organize a countrywide citizen journalism network called 140Journos
89
323863
4230
05:28
that became the central hub for uncensored news in the country.
90
328093
4431
05:32
In Egypt, I saw another four young people use digital connectivity
91
332524
5147
05:37
to organize the supplies and logistics for 10 field hospitals,
92
337671
3847
05:41
very large operations,
93
341518
2011
05:43
during massive clashes near Tahrir Square in 2011.
94
343529
5001
05:49
And I asked the founder of this effort, called Tahrir Supplies,
95
349500
3717
05:53
how long it took him to go from when he had the idea to when he got started.
96
353217
6110
05:59
"Five minutes," he said. Five minutes.
97
359327
2359
06:01
And he had no training or background in logistics.
98
361686
2548
06:04
Or think of the Occupy movement which rocked the world in 2011.
99
364234
3723
06:07
It started with a single email
100
367957
1978
06:09
from a magazine, Adbusters, to 90,000 subscribers in its list.
101
369935
5241
06:15
About two months after that first email,
102
375176
2984
06:18
there were in the United States 600 ongoing occupations and protests.
103
378160
6349
06:24
Less than one month after the first physical occupation in Zuccotti Park,
104
384509
5824
06:30
a global protest was held in about 82 countries, 950 cities.
105
390333
6841
06:37
It was one of the largest global protests ever organized.
106
397174
2745
06:39
Now, compare that to what the Civil Rights Movement had to do in 1955 Alabama
107
399919
6687
06:46
to protest the racially segregated bus system, which they wanted to boycott.
108
406606
6137
06:52
They'd been preparing for many years
109
412743
1752
06:54
and decided it was time to swing into action
110
414495
2066
06:56
after Rosa Parks was arrested.
111
416561
2203
06:58
But how do you get the word out --
112
418764
1666
07:00
tomorrow we're going to start the boycott --
113
420430
2163
07:02
when you don't have Facebook, texting, Twitter, none of that?
114
422593
5408
07:08
So they had to mimeograph 52,000 leaflets
115
428001
5170
07:13
by sneaking into a university duplicating room
116
433171
3193
07:16
and working all night, secretly.
117
436364
2541
07:18
They then used the 68 African-American organizations
118
438905
3493
07:22
that criss-crossed the city to distribute those leaflets by hand.
119
442398
3967
07:26
And the logistical tasks were daunting, because these were poor people.
120
446365
4970
07:31
They had to get to work, boycott or no,
121
451335
2090
07:33
so a massive carpool was organized,
122
453425
2902
07:36
again by meeting.
123
456327
2116
07:38
No texting, no Twitter, no Facebook.
124
458443
2395
07:40
They had to meet almost all the time to keep this carpool going.
125
460838
3569
07:44
Today, it would be so much easier.
126
464407
2272
07:46
We could create a database, available rides and what rides you need,
127
466679
4988
07:51
have the database coordinate, and use texting.
128
471667
3282
07:54
We wouldn't have to meet all that much.
129
474949
2554
07:57
But again, consider this:
130
477503
2276
07:59
the Civil Rights Movement in the United States
131
479779
2994
08:02
navigated a minefield of political dangers,
132
482773
4494
08:07
faced repression and overcame, won major policy concessions,
133
487267
5503
08:12
navigated and innovated through risks.
134
492770
3236
08:16
In contrast, three years after Occupy sparked
135
496006
3533
08:19
that global conversation about inequality,
136
499539
2606
08:22
the policies that fueled it are still in place.
137
502145
3825
08:25
Europe was also rocked by anti-austerity protests,
138
505970
3145
08:29
but the continent didn't shift its direction.
139
509115
4122
08:33
In embracing these technologies,
140
513237
2936
08:36
are we overlooking some of the benefits of slow and sustained?
141
516173
6408
08:42
To understand this,
142
522581
1869
08:44
I went back to Turkey about a year after the Gezi protests
143
524450
3123
08:47
and I interviewed a range of people,
144
527573
2277
08:49
from activists to politicians,
145
529850
3707
08:53
from both the ruling party and the opposition party and movements.
146
533557
4617
08:58
I found that the Gezi protesters were despairing.
147
538174
3306
09:01
They were frustrated,
148
541480
2031
09:03
and they had achieved much less than what they had hoped for.
149
543511
3056
09:06
This echoed what I'd been hearing around the world
150
546567
2538
09:09
from many other protesters that I'm in touch with.
151
549105
3786
09:12
And I've come to realize that part of the problem
152
552891
2307
09:15
is that today's protests have become a bit like climbing Mt. Everest
153
555198
5869
09:21
with the help of 60 Sherpas,
154
561067
2457
09:23
and the Internet is our Sherpa.
155
563524
3127
09:26
What we're doing is taking the fast routes
156
566651
4313
09:30
and not replacing the benefits of the slower work.
157
570964
3339
09:34
Because, you see,
158
574303
1696
09:35
the kind of work that went into organizing
159
575999
2868
09:38
all those daunting, tedious logistical tasks
160
578867
2783
09:41
did not just take care of those tasks,
161
581650
2629
09:44
they also created the kind of organization that could think together collectively
162
584279
4675
09:48
and make hard decisions together,
163
588963
2275
09:51
create consensus and innovate, and maybe even more crucially,
164
591238
3937
09:55
keep going together through differences.
165
595175
3367
09:58
So when you see this March on Washington in 1963,
166
598542
4788
10:03
when you look at that picture,
167
603330
1684
10:05
where this is the march where Martin Luther King gave his famous
168
605014
3341
10:08
"I have a dream" speech, 1963,
169
608355
2852
10:11
you don't just see a march and you don't just hear a powerful speech,
170
611207
4442
10:15
you also see the painstaking, long-term work that can put on that march.
171
615649
5473
10:21
And if you're in power,
172
621122
1795
10:22
you realize you have to take the capacity signaled by that march,
173
622917
4299
10:27
not just the march, but the capacity signaled by that march, seriously.
174
627218
4506
10:31
In contrast, when you look at Occupy's global marches
175
631724
4003
10:35
that were organized in two weeks,
176
635727
1642
10:37
you see a lot of discontent,
177
637369
1384
10:38
but you don't necessarily see teeth that can bite over the long term.
178
638753
4154
10:43
And crucially, the Civil Rights Movement innovated tactically
179
643617
4093
10:47
from boycotts to lunch counter sit-ins to pickets to marches to freedom rides.
180
647710
6786
10:54
Today's movements scale up very quickly without the organizational base
181
654496
3815
10:58
that can see them through the challenges.
182
658311
2589
11:00
They feel a little like startups that got very big
183
660900
3800
11:04
without knowing what to do next,
184
664700
2005
11:06
and they rarely manage to shift tactically
185
666705
2657
11:09
because they don't have the depth of capacity
186
669362
2497
11:11
to weather such transitions.
187
671859
2292
11:14
Now, I want to be clear: The magic is not in the mimeograph.
188
674151
4707
11:19
It's in that capacity to work together, think together collectively,
189
679668
5821
11:25
which can only be built over time with a lot of work.
190
685489
3182
11:28
To understand all this,
191
688671
2076
11:30
I interviewed a top official from the ruling party in Turkey,
192
690747
3824
11:34
and I ask him, "How do you do it?"
193
694571
2168
11:36
They too use digital technology extensively, so that's not it.
194
696739
3703
11:40
So what's the secret?
195
700442
1930
11:42
Well, he told me.
196
702372
1524
11:43
He said the key is he never took sugar with his tea.
197
703896
6636
11:50
I said, what has that got to do with anything?
198
710532
3061
11:53
Well, he said, his party starts getting ready for the next election
199
713593
3166
11:56
the day after the last one,
200
716759
1541
11:58
and he spends all day every day meeting with voters in their homes,
201
718300
3981
12:02
in their wedding parties, circumcision ceremonies,
202
722281
2582
12:04
and then he meets with his colleagues to compare notes.
203
724863
2955
12:07
With that many meetings every day, with tea offered at every one of them,
204
727818
4566
12:12
which he could not refuse, because that would be rude,
205
732384
3352
12:15
he could not take even one cube of sugar per cup of tea,
206
735736
4643
12:20
because that would be many kilos of sugar, he can't even calculate how many kilos,
207
740379
3956
12:24
and at that point I realized why he was speaking so fast.
208
744335
3644
12:27
We had met in the afternoon, and he was already way over-caffeinated.
209
747979
3251
12:32
But his party won two major elections
210
752527
4473
12:37
within a year of the Gezi protests with comfortable margins.
211
757000
3658
12:40
To be sure, governments have different resources to bring to the table.
212
760658
3339
12:43
It's not the same game, but the differences are instructive.
213
763997
3150
12:47
And like all such stories, this is not a story just of technology.
214
767154
3855
12:51
It's what technology allows us to do converging with what we want to do.
215
771009
5082
12:56
Today's social movements want to operate informally.
216
776091
3786
12:59
They do not want institutional leadership.
217
779877
2270
13:02
They want to stay out of politics because they fear corruption and cooptation.
218
782147
4866
13:07
They have a point.
219
787013
1533
13:08
Modern representative democracies are being strangled in many countries
220
788546
3415
13:11
by powerful interests.
221
791961
1643
13:14
But operating this way makes it hard for them
222
794244
3274
13:17
to sustain over the long term and exert leverage over the system,
223
797518
3750
13:21
which leads to frustrated protesters dropping out,
224
801268
3262
13:24
and even more corrupt politics.
225
804530
3359
13:27
And politics and democracy without an effective challenge hobbles,
226
807889
5088
13:32
because the causes that have inspired the modern recent movements are crucial.
227
812977
6393
13:39
Climate change is barreling towards us.
228
819370
3095
13:42
Inequality is stifling human growth and potential and economies.
229
822465
4883
13:47
Authoritarianism is choking many countries.
230
827348
2285
13:49
We need movements to be more effective.
231
829633
2751
13:52
Now, some people have argued that the problem is
232
832384
2678
13:55
today's movements are not formed of people who take as many risks as before,
233
835062
6459
14:01
and that is not true.
234
841521
2048
14:03
From Gezi to Tahrir to elsewhere,
235
843569
2562
14:06
I've seen people put their lives and livelihoods on the line.
236
846131
3638
14:09
It's also not true, as Malcolm Gladwell claimed,
237
849769
2419
14:12
that today's protesters form weaker virtual ties.
238
852188
2742
14:14
No, they come to these protests, just like before,
239
854930
3791
14:18
with their friends, existing networks,
240
858721
2612
14:21
and sometimes they do make new friends for life.
241
861333
2302
14:23
I still see the friends that I made
242
863635
2586
14:26
in those Zapatista-convened global protests more than a decade ago,
243
866221
3422
14:29
and the bonds between strangers are not worthless.
244
869643
2972
14:32
When I got tear-gassed in Gezi,
245
872615
2284
14:34
people I didn't know helped me and one another instead of running away.
246
874899
5272
14:40
In Tahrir, I saw people, protesters,
247
880171
3227
14:43
working really hard to keep each other safe and protected.
248
883398
2810
14:46
And digital awareness-raising is great,
249
886208
1889
14:48
because changing minds is the bedrock of changing politics.
250
888097
3719
14:51
But movements today have to move beyond participation at great scale very fast
251
891816
7400
14:59
and figure out how to think together collectively,
252
899216
3499
15:02
develop strong policy proposals, create consensus,
253
902715
3741
15:06
figure out the political steps and relate them to leverage,
254
906456
3674
15:10
because all these good intentions and bravery and sacrifice by itself
255
910130
3683
15:13
are not going to be enough.
256
913813
1672
15:15
And there are many efforts.
257
915485
1896
15:17
In New Zealand, a group of young people are developing a platform called Loomio
258
917381
4389
15:21
for participatory decision making at scale.
259
921770
3001
15:24
In Turkey, 140Journos are holding hack-a-thons
260
924771
3275
15:28
so that they support communities as well as citizen journalism.
261
928046
3833
15:32
In Argentina, an open-source platform called DemocracyOS
262
932619
3106
15:35
is bringing participation to parliaments and political parties.
263
935725
3408
15:39
These are all great, and we need more,
264
939133
3385
15:42
but the answer won't just be better online decision-making,
265
942518
4176
15:46
because to update democracy, we are going to need to innovate at every level,
266
946694
5553
15:52
from the organizational to the political to the social.
267
952247
4493
15:56
Because to succeed over the long term,
268
956740
3952
16:00
sometimes you do need tea without sugar
269
960692
2372
16:03
along with your Twitter.
270
963064
1633
16:04
Thank you.
271
964697
1512
16:06
(Applause)
272
966209
6801
About this website

This site will introduce you to YouTube videos that are useful for learning English. You will see English lessons taught by top-notch teachers from around the world. Double-click on the English subtitles displayed on each video page to play the video from there. The subtitles scroll in sync with the video playback. If you have any comments or requests, please contact us using this contact form.

https://forms.gle/WvT1wiN1qDtmnspy7