Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and the Fragility of Networked Protest by Zeynep Tufekci (review)

Tufecki has written an important book that offers a granular assessment of contemporary digital protest. It is a sober, stock-taking study of several protest movements that attracted considerable scholarly and journalistic attention in recent years. The book does what good books should do: It provides valuable original data and perceptive insights about an important subject, and it raises further questions. The analysis moves breezily from the "Arab spring" to movements in Turkey and the United States to Mexico's Zapatistas, from discussions about collective action to digital technologies. The writing is lively, with personal recollections, thoughtful observations, and personal testimonies from protesters. Altogether, Tufecki offers a textured chronicle of the dynamics of several movements and the hopes of activists.

The argument is compelling even if it is buried under lengthy descriptions and analytical asides: Digital tools are powerful instruments for organizing and for public expression, but they are not sufficient to bring about political change. There is much that horizontalism can accomplish, even if movements showed capacity to construct counternarratives, disrupt everyday life in positive ways, and nurture institutional skills.

This conclusion may not be a revelation to many scholars of collective action, familiar with the complexity of social change, but it is an important point to be hammered on in the aftermath of rushed and sociologically thin prognoses that envisioned a bright, democratic future brought about by digital activism. Huge mobilizations that astutely used social media were seen as the harbinger of progressive change. Optimistic positions were based more on the belief about the potential of digital horizontal participation than on impeccable evidence or nuanced dissections of political situations. Sadly, history showed the power of the status quo and its furious reaction against protesters. The "tear gas" in the book's title is a reminder of the entrenched authority of political, economic, and military actors—a metonym for sclerotic states that struck back and ultimately prevailed.

Tufecki's conclusion is bittersweet, particularly given her own direct involvement in many protests as well as her sympathetic stand on several movements. Just as activists built communities and cultivated a legacy of participation, they achieved little in terms of major policy goals they set out to achieve, whether wealth redistribution, political democracy, or stopping war.

I wish Tufecki had articulated her theoretical argument in clearer, crisper terms. Given her first-rate insights into several movements, the analysis could have delivered a powerful argument about why changes failed to materialize. She clearly shows the limitations of "assemblyism" and leaderless movements to drive democratic changes, but the book does not advance a concise argument about what was missing. Was it the right political junctures? Elite support? Misunderstanding the complexity of reactionary forces? Did activists make incorrect strategic choices that explain why early hopes were crushed? The references to the success of the Tea Party in the United States could have been used to address these questions. Or perhaps this case does not truly apply to progressive movements, given several differences between right-wing and left-wing social movements in terms of linkages to established politics, sources and level of funding, and other variables.

Another issue the book could have been discussed in more detail is whether protest movements are truly comparable. Yes, they used digital platforms similarly in innovative ways to coordinate actions and voice opinions, but they took place in widely different political and social contexts—from authoritarian regimes to liberal democracies. Some wanted to overthrow dictatorships and promote democracy; others wanted to change economic and social policies; still others wanted to abolish capitalism and racism. They can be rightly considered "anti-authoritarian movements," as Tufecki points out, but they operated in widely different political contexts. This is important for many reasons. Are political elites in (semi)authoritarian regimes less prone to respond to signals from movements than in democratic systems? Do similar tactics, such as demonstrations, have similar impact in different contexts—Mubarak's Egypt, Erdogan...