Our online bookclub is reading Zeynep Tufekci’s Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest. Here’s the plan.
I’ll blog about sections of the book starting November 19th, every Monday for the next five weeks. These posts will have a short summary of the reading, my observations, and some questions. The posts will also have summaries of and links to other commentary as we go.
Based on my reading of the material, I picked chunks of the book that run between around 40 and 60 pages. That’s doable for a week’s read, while leaving time for folks to reflect and comment.
The schedule runs as follows:
November 19, 2018: Preface, Introduction, and chapter 1, “A Networked Public”.
November 26: Chapters 2: “Censorship and Attention” and 3: “Leading the Leaderless”.
December 3: Chapters 4: “Movement Cultures” and 5: “Technology and People”.
December 10: Chapters 6: “Platforms and Algorithms” and 7: “Names and Connections”.
December 17: Chapters 8: “Signaling Power and Signaling to Power” and 9: “Governments Strike Back”.
December 24: Epilogue, “The Uncertain Climb.”
All blog posts and their associated comments will be tagged https://bryanalexander.org/tag/tufekci/, and so will be available in that one spot for any reader now and in the future.
How do you participate? Pretty much however you like:
- reading on your own and following these posts
- adding comments to each blog post
- sharing thoughts on Twitter (please tweet @ me to get your tweets into the next blog post)
- writing more thoughts on your own site, or on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Instagram, or wherever you like. (Let me know if you’d like me to link to and/or summarize your reactions on my next post)
- annotate relevant web content with Hypothes.is (again, let me know)
- creating audio or video commentary. Readers who make podcasts or videos can certainly tune their media to our discursive channel. One Future Trends Forum guest took time in our conversation to reflect on the then-current reading.
- making stuff. In previous readings people have created a variety of responses, like an inspired dialog, a social network analysis of readers and reading, even a quote-generating Twitter bot.
- …and any other way you’d like. Let us know what you decide! This is an open and welcoming reading.
Also, I will reach out to professor Tufekci to invite her to join us however she can: comments here, Twitter notes, or video.
There is a good amount of information about the book online. It has its own Wikipedia page. You can also find it on Goodreads and its official site. Grab a library copy, get your own, and dig in.
Happy reading!
