1. Zeynep Tufekci, Ph.D. @techsoc www.technosociology.org
NAFAC
April 12th, 2011

2. Social Media, Social Change and Causal Mechanisms
Faster is Different
Social Media, Social Change and Causal Mechanisms

3. What Does Social Media Change?
Network effects
Shape/structure of the network
Speed of transmission
Field effects
Reshaping/recreating a public sphere
Revealing hidden preferences

4. Does social media give us the same results, just faster?
Or, does it qualitatively change the dynamics?

5. Social media alters the shape of the network
Existing:
One-to-Many (Broadcast)
Powerful to the powerless
One-to-one/few (Face-to-face, telephone, etc.)
Peer-to-peer
Addition:
Many-to-many

6. One-to-Many Network (Broadcast)

7. One-to-Many Network (Broadcast)

8. First Target in a Coup!

9. One-to-One

10. Many-to-Many Networks

11. Lessons from Epidemiology
Speed of Transmission
Speed of Recovery
Shape of Network
Hubs and connectivity increases contagion
These factors determine
whether a quarantine will work

15. Altered Dynamics State is a resource-constrained actor
Autocracies often have evolved to play “whack-a-protest”
Social media, by allowing mass coordination and rapid information diffusion, complicates “whack-a-protest”

16. Example: Tunisia Gafsa: 2008. Sidi Bouzid: 2010
Mining town, protests over corrupt hiring
Isolated, crushed (quarantined)
28,000 Facebook users in Tunisia
Sidi Bouzid: 2010
Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation
Protests spread (viral)
Almost 2,000,000 Facebook users in Tunisia

17. Thank you! Zeynep Tufekci zeynep@umbc.edu @techsoc