The South African Civil Society Information Service

How the Internet has Made Social Change Easy to Organize, Hard to Win

4 Feb 2015

Today the speed at which we spread information is so fast that a single email can launch a worldwide awareness campaign, as with the Occupy movement. Yet as techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci seeks to show, the ease of social media can actually hurt social change in the long run. From Gezi Park to the Arab Spring to Ukraine to Hong Kong, she shows how today's movements can miss out on the benefits of doing things the hard (and slow) way. Technology does empower in multiple ways, but easier to moblise does not always mean easier to achieve gains, contends Tufekci.

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You can find this page online at http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/2270.