My Writings on Social Media and Social Movements: A Selection

I write occasionally for other outlets besides my blog.  Hey, some of them are even academic papers! 🙂 People have been asking me for a selection so here you go.

Blog pieces elsewhere relating to Turkey and analyzing recent events:

Academic papers on social media and social movements:

Also, let me repost two very early pieces that remain relevant.

  • Delusions Aside, The Net’s Potential is Real: This is a pre-Arab Spring piece which responds to Evgeny Morozov’s first book, the Net Delusion, which I thought made some good points and included important corrections to some of the existing hype but also missed the big picture about the Internet’s potential (and was too Internet-centric, in my opinion, and conflated other structural failures with weaknesses of Internet’s impact on social movements ). I am happy to say I stand by my pre-Arab Spring review and feel like history has played out largely in favor of my arguments (though as I make clear in the review, I do not disagree with everything Mozorov said in the Net Delusion).
  • What Gladwell Gets Wrong:  This responds to Malcolm Gladwell’s article in the New Yorker which argued that Internet was not useful for social movements because it was mostly good for weak ties, and because social movements can only flourish from strong ties. I argued then that Gladwell suffers from not understanding the Internet, social movements, or how social ties operate, weak or strong. That one can almost pass without comment now (except to say that Malcolm Gladwell’s has a strong Igon Value Problem); however it is a good reminder of how primitive –and wrong– some discussion on the topic of social movements were just a few years ago.

 

One thought on “My Writings on Social Media and Social Movements: A Selection

  1. Sundus

    Hi!
    Thanks for this selection! This is what I have been searching for my final paper. I am planning to write on your works about social movements/protests and how they conceptualize Internet/socialmedia’s role in relation to the recent protests in Turkey. [Bu arada Turkum , Communication master ogrencisiyim :)] I was wondering if you could also guide me through any important concepts or the general theoretical framework of your work on this issue. I would appreciate it a lot, as I am not so informed about social movements in general but I would definitely like to write a paper telling the story of Gezi Park in some way… And your work seems to be the best fit for my purpose. I really liked your article “The Social Internet” when we read it for the class that I will write the paper for. And I will read the articles in this selection as well. What else can I look at? Or these three are the main ones concerning social movements?
    I would appreciate it a lot if you could reply as soon as possible as my due date is soon.
    Thanks a lot!
    Cok tesekkurler! 🙂

    Reply

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