Twitter and Tear Gas

1. Digital Connectivity Reshapes the Public Sphere

Digital connectivity reshapes how movements connect, organize, and evolve during their lifespan.

A new public space. Digital technologies have fundamentally altered the public sphere, creating a networked environment where individuals and groups can connect, discuss, and organize outside traditional gatekeepers like mass media. This shift is as profound as the changes brought by earlier technologies like writing or the printing press.

Finding like minds. The internet makes it easier for people with shared interests or grievances to find one another, overcoming geographical barriers and breaking down feelings of isolation. This "homophily" is crucial for the initial formation of social movements, allowing dissidents to build networks and discover they are not alone.

Beyond the screen. The networked public sphere is not just online; it's a complex interaction of online and offline spaces. Online connections facilitate offline meetings and protests, and offline events are documented and amplified online, creating a continuous feedback loop that transforms how movements operate.

2. Attention Is the New Currency, Censorship Evolves

Attention is oxygen for movements.

Competing for visibility. In the digital age, attention is a crucial, limited resource for social movements. Unlike the past where mass media held a near monopoly on public attention, now anyone can potentially broadcast, leading to an overwhelming "information glut."

Censorship by denial. Modern censorship is less about blocking information outright (which is difficult with digital tools) and more about denying attention, focus, and credibility. Governments and powerful actors use tactics like:

• Flooding the online space with misinformation and distractions.
• Aggressively challenging the credibility of dissenting voices.
• Creating confusion and doubt to paralyze people into inaction.

Circumvention and backfire. Attempts at traditional blocking can backfire, as seen with Egypt's internet shutdown or Turkey's Twitter bans, which often draw more attention (the Streisand Effect) and encourage the use of circumvention tools like VPNs. The challenge is no longer just getting information out, but ensuring it is seen and trusted amidst the noise.

3. Rapid Mobilization Bypasses Traditional Organizing Capacity

The internet similarly allows networked movements to grow dramatically and rapidly, but without prior building of formal or informal organizational and other collective capacities that could prepare them for the inevitable challenges they will face and give them the ability to respond to what comes next.

Adhocracy in action. Digital tools enable movements to mobilize large numbers of people quickly and organize tasks "on the fly" (adhocracy), bypassing the slow, tedious work of traditional organizing. Examples include:

• Using hashtags to call for protests instead of months of planning.
• Coordinating logistics like medical supplies via Google Docs and Twitter.
• Crowdfunding resources instead of relying on large donors.

Speed vs. resilience. While this speed is a powerful strength, it means movements often lack the "network internalities"—the collective decision-making skills, trust, and resilience built through sustained, challenging organizational work. They hit critical moments requiring agile tactical shifts without the necessary experience or structures.

Fragility in success. Movements that scale up rapidly using digital tools can be powerful in their initial phase but fragile when faced with inevitable challenges like internal disagreements, government countermeasures, or the need to transition to new tactics after a protest or occupation ends.

4. Leaderlessness Offers Resilience but Hinders Strategy

Although their ability (as well as their desire) to operate without defined leadership protects them from co-optation or “decapitation,” it also makes them unable to negotiate with adversaries or even inside the movement itself.

Horizontalism as a choice. Many networked movements embrace "leaderlessness" or "horizontalism" as a core political value, stemming from distrust of traditional institutions and a desire for direct participation. Digital tools facilitate this by enabling decentralized coordination.

Pros and cons. This lack of formal leadership makes movements resilient to authorities targeting or co-opting a few individuals. However, it creates significant challenges:

• Difficulty in collective decision-making and resolving internal conflicts.
• Inability to negotiate effectively with governments or other powerful actors.
• Tendency towards "tactical freeze," repeating initial successful tactics even when conditions change.

De facto leaders emerge. Despite the ideal of leaderlessness, individuals often gain prominence and become de facto spokespersons, often based on online visibility or tenacity. These individuals lack formal legitimacy, leading to internal conflict and making them targets for both internal criticism and external harassment.

5. Movement Culture Intertwines with Digital Affordances

The sense of rebellion that is felt at a protest and the work that people perform in protests are inseparable.

Beyond instrumental goals. Protests are not solely about achieving specific policy goals; they are also expressions of identity, community building, and a search for meaning. The "spirit of Gezi" or the "Republic of Tahrir" reflects this desire for belonging and collective effervescence.

Values in action. The participatory, anti-institutional, and community-oriented culture of many networked movements is reflected in their actions, such as setting up libraries, communal kitchens, and emphasizing cleanliness in protest camps. These acts are symbolic statements about desired values like non-commodified interaction and mutual aid.

Digital tools as cultural enablers. Digital technologies facilitate this culture by:

• Enabling rapid sharing of cultural products like memes and chants.
• Creating a sense of collective identity and belonging through shared online spaces.
• Allowing individuals to express themselves and connect with others who share their values, even across vast distances.

6. Platforms and Algorithms Become Powerful Gatekeepers

Communicating primarily in this networked public but privately owned sphere is a bit like moving political gatherings to shopping malls from public squares or sending letters via commercial couriers rather than the U.S. Postal Service; neither shopping malls nor Facebook nor any other private company guarantees freedom of speech or privacy.

Centralized power. Despite the decentralized nature of the internet, a few large commercial platforms (Facebook, Google, Twitter) have become dominant hubs for online activity due to network effects and ad-based business models. These platforms act as new, powerful gatekeepers to the public sphere.

Policies and algorithms. These platforms control visibility and access through:

• Terms-of-service policies (e.g., real names, content rules) that can disproportionately affect activists.
• Algorithmic filtering (e.g., Facebook's News Feed, Google Search ranking) that determines what content is seen and prioritized.
• Business models (ads) that incentivize engagement and advertiser-friendly content, potentially burying political or controversial topics.

Opaque influence. The power of these platforms is often opaque and personalized. Users may not know their feed is algorithmically controlled, and the criteria for visibility or censorship are proprietary and constantly changing, making it difficult for movements to understand or counter their influence.

7. Online Identity and Reputation Shape Interaction

Online platforms are not governed only by the rules set by the companies that own the spaces; they also have cultures and norms created by the platform’s users and evolved through their actions.

Pseudonymity vs. real names. Platforms differ in how they handle user identity (real name, pseudonymity, anonymity) and whether online interactions build a persistent reputation (karma, followers). These design choices have significant consequences for community formation and social dynamics.

Community norms emerge. Even in pseudonymous spaces, communities develop internal norms and hierarchies, as seen in the Reddit "Jailbait" example, where users built reputation ("karma") for behavior deemed abhorrent by mainstream society. This shows that online communities are not exempt from social dynamics.

Risks and opportunities. Pseudonymity can offer protection for dissidents and allow for open discussion of taboo topics (like on YouBeMom or early IRC). However, it also enables large-scale harassment campaigns and makes it easier for opponents or state actors to spread disinformation or impersonate activists.

8. Governments Adapt with New Control Tactics

Rather than attempt to break the first link, information dissemination, censorship through information glut focuses on the second link, weakening the agency that might be generated by information.

Beyond blocking. Governments have learned from early failures (like Egypt's internet shutdown) and developed more sophisticated methods of control in the digital age. These include:

• Censorship by information glut: Drowning out dissenting voices with noise, misinformation, and distractions.
• Demonizing the medium: Portraying platforms like Twitter as threats to national values or security.
• Targeted harassment: Using "troll armies" or organized campaigns to silence activists through abuse and threats.

Exploiting platform weaknesses. Governments leverage platforms' reliance on "community policing" and their business models to target dissidents through mass reporting or by spreading disinformation that goes viral in echo chambers.

Surveillance evolves. While political surveillance is a constant, digital tools enable new forms, including tracking personal lives (kompromat) to intimidate activists, highlighting that surveillance threats extend beyond monitoring political communication.

9. Movement Power Lies in Signaling Capacity

Evaluating movement capacity as multidimensional helps explain why a movement like Occupy can be both so large and successful in some dimensions and so fragile in others.

Beyond headcounts. The power of social movements is not solely in their size or energy, but in their underlying capacities and how they signal these to those in power. Key capacities include:

• Narrative capacity: Ability to frame issues and control the story.
• Disruptive capacity: Ability to interrupt business as usual.
• Electoral/Institutional capacity: Ability to influence elections or institutional behavior.

Signals and interpretation. Movements signal these capacities through actions (protests, online campaigns), and those in power interpret these signals to assess the threat. Costly signals (requiring significant effort or risk) are often more credible than cheap talk.

Digital tech's uneven impact. Digital tools can greatly enhance narrative capacity (e.g., Black Lives Matter, Occupy) but may not automatically build disruptive or electoral/institutional capacity, especially if they bypass traditional organizing that develops these skills. This can lead to movements strong in some areas but fragile in others.

10. The Digital Transformation Is a Complex, Unfolding Story

Barely a decade into a global upheaval in technology, communication, and connectivity, the new state of affairs already appears deceptively familiar.

Dialectical change. Like the printing press era, the digital transformation is a complex, dialectical process. Technologies empower both challengers and the powerful, often in unexpected ways, and introduce new dynamics that are still unfolding.

No simple answers. There are no easy, universal solutions to the challenges posed by the networked public sphere. Issues like censorship, harassment, and the power of platforms involve complex trade-offs and require ongoing adaptation from both movements and societies.

Learning and adapting. Movements and governments are continuously learning and adapting their strategies in this new landscape. Some movements are exploring new organizational tools (Loomio) or engaging with electoral politics in new ways (Podemos, Black Lives Matter), while governments refine their control tactics. The story is far from over.

Last updated: April 28, 2025