Zeynep Tufekci: How the Internet has made social change easy to organize, hard to win
Summary
TLDREl uso de las redes sociales ha sido fundamental para impulsar y organizar movimientos sociales en todo el mundo, como se vio en los protestas de Gezi Park en Turquía en 2013. Sin embargo, la facilidad que ofrece la tecnología para la movilización no siempre se traduce en logros a largo plazo. La tecnología puede ser un gran empoderador, pero los movimientos que se escalan rápidamente sin una base organizativa sólida pueden encontrarse en dificultades para enfrentar los desafíos y adaptarse tácticamente. La habilidad colectiva para pensar y tomar decisiones juntas, así como el desarrollo de propuestas políticas sólidas y la creación de consensos, son fundamentales para el éxito a largo plazo. La innovación en la toma de decisiones en línea es importante, pero para actualizar la democracia y hacer que los movimientos sean más efectivos, se necesita innovación en todos los niveles: organizativo, político y social.
Takeaways
- 🌐 **Tecnología y Movimientos Sociales**: La tecnología, especialmente las redes sociales, ha ayudado a impulsar y organizar movimientos sociales, pero también puede paradoxalmente debilitarlos si no se utiliza adecuadamente.
- 📉 **Efectividad vs. Facilidad**: La facilidad de movilización tecnológica no siempre se traduce en una mayor probabilidad de éxito a largo plazo.
- 🇹🇷 **Ejemplo Turquía**: Las protestas del Parque Gezi en 2013 ilustran cómo Twitter fue clave en la organización, pero la tecnología no es todo; la resistencia y la movilización requieren un compromiso a largo plazo.
- 📰 **Censura y Contención**: Los medios de comunicación tradicionales pueden censurar o minimizar los eventos de protesta, pero la tecnología permite a los ciudadanos informar y organizarse de manera alternativa.
- 🔄 **Movilización vs. Organización**: La tecnología hace que sea más fácil movilizar a grandes cantidades de personas rápidamente, pero esto no garantiza una organización sólida y sostenible.
- 👥 **Comunidad y Redes**: Los movimientos sociales modernos se apoyan en las redes existentes y en la creación de nuevas relaciones, lo que refuta la idea de que los lazos son más débiles en el activismo digital.
- 🚀 **Escala Rápida vs. Base Orgánica**: Los movimientos que se escalan rápidamente sin una base organizativa sólida pueden encontrarse en dificultades para adaptarse y persistir ante desafíos.
- 🤔 **Desafío Político**: Los movimientos sociales deben ir más allá de la movilización y aprender a pensar y actuar colectivamente, desarrollar propuestas políticas sólidas y encontrar formas de ejercer presión política.
- 🌱 **Innovación y Participación**: Existen iniciativas prometedoras que promueven la toma de decisiones participativas a gran escala, pero se necesita más para actualizar la democracia.
- ☕ **Trabajo a Largo Plazo**: A veces, el éxito a largo plazo requiere de un compromiso constante y un esfuerzo sostenible, que puede ser comparado con la necesidad de beber té sin azúcar para mantener la energía y la claridad.
- 📝 **Activismo y Política**: Los movimientos sociales deben encontrar un equilibrio entre el activismo y la participación política para ser efectivos a largo plazo y evitar la cooptación y la corrupción.
Q & A
¿Cómo ha ayudado las redes sociales a empoderar a las protestas?
-Las redes sociales han ayudado a empoderar a las protestas al facilitar la organización y la difusión de información, como se menciona en el caso de las protestas del Parque Gezi en Turquía en 2013.
¿Por qué la tecnología también podría perjudicar a los movimientos sociales?
-La tecnología puede perjudicar a los movimientos sociales porque, aunque facilita la movilización, no siempre se traduce en logros a largo plazo. Los movimientos pueden depender excesivamente de las herramientas digitales y carecer de la base organizativa sólida necesaria para enfrentar desafíos a largo plazo.
¿Cómo afectó el uso de Twitter en la protesta de Gezi Park en 2013?
-Twitter jugó un papel clave en la organización de la protesta de Gezi Park. Ayudó a la difusión de noticias y a la movilización de las personas, superando el silencio de los medios de comunicación tradicionales.
¿Cómo se comparan las protestas de Occupy Wall Street con las del Movimiento por los Derechos Civiles en los Estados Unidos?
-Mientras que Occupy Wall Street utilizó tecnologías digitales para organizar rápidamente protestas a gran escala, el Movimiento por los Derechos Civiles tuvo que enfrentarse a desafíos logísticos mucho más complejos sin estas herramientas, lo que ayudó a forjar una base organizativa sólida y a enfrentar desafíos a largo plazo.
¿Por qué los movimientos sociales actuales pueden sentirse frustrados y haber logrado menos de lo esperado?
-Los movimientos sociales actuales pueden sentirse frustrados y haber logrado menos de lo esperado debido a que la facilidad de movilización rápida no siempre se traduce en logros a largo plazo. Carecen de la base organizativa y la capacidad para innovar y adaptarse a los desafíos a largo plazo.
¿Qué es lo que distingue a los movimientos sociales exitosos de aquellos que no logran resultados a largo plazo?
-Los movimientos sociales exitosos son aquellos que logran construir una base organizativa sólida, son capaces de pensar y tomar decisiones colectivamente, y adaptarse a los desafíos a largo plazo. Estos movimientos suelen tener una innovación táctica y logran desafíos políticos significativos.
¿Cómo las tecnologías digitales pueden ayudar a los movimientos sociales más allá de la movilización rápida?
-Las tecnologías digitales pueden ayudar a los movimientos sociales a construir una base organizativa sólida, a desarrollar propuestas políticas fortes, a crear consensos y a encontrar pasos políticos que puedan ejercer presión sobre el sistema.
¿Qué es Loomio y cómo puede ayudar a los movimientos sociales?
-Loomio es una plataforma desarrollada en Nueva Zelanda para la toma de decisiones participativas a gran escala. Puede ayudar a los movimientos sociales a pensar y tomar decisiones colectivamente de manera más efectiva.
¿Qué es DemocracyOS y cómo afecta a la participación política?
-DemocracyOS es una plataforma de código abierto que busca traer la participación directa de los ciudadanos a los parlamentos y partidos políticos. Fomenta una democracia más inclusiva y participativa.
¿Por qué es importante que los movimientos sociales se organicen y tomen decisiones a largo plazo?
-Es importante que los movimientos sociales se organicen y tomen decisiones a largo plazo porque les permite enfrentar desafíos, innovar tácticamente, adaptarse a cambios y mantener la cohesión y el compromiso a lo largo del tiempo.
¿Cómo pueden los movimientos sociales modernos mejorar su eficacia?
-Los movimientos sociales modernos pueden mejorar su eficacia al desarrollar una base organizativa sólida, al pensar y tomar decisiones colectivamente, al crear propuestas políticas fuertes, al establecer consensos y al encontrar formas de ejercer presión política de manera sostenida.
¿Qué rol juegan las redes sociales en la movilización de las masas durante las protestas?
-Las redes sociales juegan un papel crucial en la movilización de las masas, permitiendo la rápida difusión de información y la coordinación de esfuerzos, pero también deben complementarse con una organización sólida y tácticas a largo plazo para lograr cambios significativos.
Outlines
📱 Redes sociales y el poder de movilización
El primer párrafo explora cómo las redes sociales han ayudado a empoderar a las protestas, pero también cómo pueden debilitarlas. Se menciona la importancia de entender los factores que hacen posible el éxito a largo plazo. Se utiliza como ejemplo el caso de las protestas en el Parque Gezi de Turquía en 2013, destacando el papel crucial de Twitter en la organización y la censura de los medios de comunicación. Además, se compara con otros movimientos sociales históricos y se plantea la pregunta de por qué, con la facilidad que ofrece la tecnología, los resultados exitosos no son más probables.
💪 Mobilización fácil no significa logro fácil
El segundo párrafo discute la creencia de que la facilidad de movilización tecnológica no siempre se traduce en logros más fáciles. Se destaca el poder de la tecnología en la organización de redes de periodismo ciudadano y el suministro de hospitales durante protestas. Sin embargo, se argumenta que la facilidad de movilización rápida puede no ser sustituta por el trabajo lento y sostenido que construye una organización capaz de enfrentar desafíos y tomar decisiones difíciles juntas. Se comparte la experiencia de la protesta en el Parque Gezi y cómo, a pesar del éxito inicial, los manifestantes se sintieron desesperanzados al no lograr los resultados esperados.
🤔 La importancia del trabajo a largo plazo
Este párrafo profundiza en la idea de que los movimientos sociales actuales, aunque rápidos en escalar y movilizar, carecen de la base organizativa para enfrentar los desafíos a largo plazo. Se compara con el Movimiento por los Derechos Civiles, que a pesar de las dificultades lograba cambios significativos. Se destaca la importancia de la innovación táctica y la necesidad de que los movimientos modernos superen la participación masiva rápida y comiencen a pensar y actuar de manera colectiva para desarrollar propuestas políticas sólidas y tener un impacto sostenible en el sistema político.
🌐 Innovación en la democracia y los movimientos sociales
El último párrafo enfatiza la necesidad de que los movimientos sociales modernos y la democracia se adapten y se innoven en todos los niveles, desde organizativos hasta políticos y sociales. Se mencionan iniciativas en diferentes países que están trabajando en la toma de decisiones participativa a gran escala y se argumenta que, aunque las buenas intenciones y el coraje son fundamentales, no son suficientes. Se hace un llamado a la acción para que los movimientos se vuelvan más efectivos y se cierra con una reflexión sobre la importancia de la perseverancia y el compromiso a largo plazo.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Movimientos sociales
💡Redes sociales
💡Protestas
💡Censura
💡Conectividad digital
💡Organización de eventos
💡Movimiento de los Indignados
💡Innovación táctica
💡Participación política
💡Desafío democrático
💡Innovación en la organización
Highlights
Social media can both empower and weaken social movements.
Technology has paradoxically helped to weaken social movements despite its empowering capabilities.
Success in social movements requires understanding long-term success factors.
Twitter played a key role in organizing Turkey's Gezi Park protests in 2013.
The power of social media was demonstrated when it broke censorship during the Turkish media's coverage of the Kurdish smugglers' bombing.
The Gezi protests evolved from a local park issue to an anti-authoritarian movement.
In the Gezi protests, media censorship led to the public seeking news through social media.
The use of digital connectivity for organizing protests has a long history, dating back to the Zapatistas in Mexico.
The Arab uprisings, indignados, and Euromaidan are examples of movements that have used digital technology for mobilization.
Despite the energy and size of movements, their outcomes are often not proportional to the impact they inspire.
The ease of mobilization through technology does not always equate to easier achievement of gains.
Technology has enabled rapid organization, as seen with the Occupy movement and Tahrir Supplies in Egypt.
The Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. provides an example of the power of long-term, sustained effort without digital tools.
Modern protests may become despondent and achieve less due to a lack of long-term organizational depth.
The organizational strength from doing hard, logistical work is crucial for sustained collective action.
Protests that are too reliant on technology may lack the depth and capacity to adapt and innovate over time.
Successful long-term movements need to innovate tactically and have a strong policy focus.
Modern social movements tend to avoid institutional leadership and formal politics, which can limit their long-term effectiveness.
There is a need for social movements to be more effective in addressing critical issues like climate change, inequality, and authoritarianism.
Innovative platforms like Loomio, 140Journos, and DemocracyOS are examples of efforts to enhance participatory decision-making at scale.
For long-term success, social movements must combine the use of digital technology with the hard work of collective thinking and policy development.
Transcripts
So recently, we heard a lot about how social media helps empower protest,
and that's true,
but after more than a decade
of studying and participating in multiple social movements,
I've come to realize
that the way technology empowers social movements
can also paradoxically help weaken them.
This is not inevitable, but overcoming it requires diving deep
into what makes success possible over the long term.
And the lessons apply in multiple domains.
Now, take Turkey's Gezi Park protests, July 2013,
which I went back to study in the field.
Twitter was key to its organizing.
It was everywhere in the park -- well, along with a lot of tear gas.
It wasn't all high tech.
But the people in Turkey had already gotten used to the power of Twitter
because of an unfortunate incident about a year before
when military jets had bombed and killed
34 Kurdish smugglers near the border region,
and Turkish media completely censored this news.
Editors sat in their newsrooms
and waited for the government to tell them what to do.
One frustrated journalist could not take this anymore.
He purchased his own plane ticket,
and went to the village where this had occurred.
And he was confronted by this scene:
a line of coffins coming down a hill, relatives wailing.
He later he told me how overwhelmed he felt,
and didn't know what to do,
so he took out his phone,
like any one of us might,
and snapped that picture and tweeted it out.
And voila, that picture went viral
and broke the censorship and forced mass media to cover it.
So when, a year later, Turkey's Gezi protests happened,
it started as a protest about a park being razed,
but became an anti-authoritarian protest.
It wasn't surprising that media also censored it,
but it got a little ridiculous at times.
When things were so intense,
when CNN International was broadcasting live from Istanbul,
CNN Turkey instead was broadcasting a documentary on penguins.
Now, I love penguin documentaries, but that wasn't the news of the day.
An angry viewer put his two screens together and snapped that picture,
and that one too went viral,
and since then, people call Turkish media the penguin media. (Laughter)
But this time, people knew what to do.
They just took out their phones and looked for actual news.
Better, they knew to go to the park and take pictures and participate
and share it more on social media.
Digital connectivity was used for everything from food to donations.
Everything was organized partially with the help of these new technologies.
And using Internet to mobilize and publicize protests
actually goes back a long way.
Remember the Zapatistas,
the peasant uprising in the southern Chiapas region of Mexico
led by the masked, pipe-smoking, charismatic Subcomandante Marcos?
That was probably the first movement
that got global attention thanks to the Internet.
Or consider Seattle '99,
when a multinational grassroots effort brought global attention
to what was then an obscure organization, the World Trade Organization,
by also utilizing these digital technologies to help them organize.
And more recently, movement after movement
has shaken country after country:
the Arab uprisings from Bahrain to Tunisia to Egypt and more;
indignados in Spain, Italy, Greece; the Gezi Park protests;
Taiwan; Euromaidan in Ukraine; Hong Kong.
And think of more recent initiatives, like the #BringBackOurGirls hashtags.
Nowadays, a network of tweets can unleash a global awareness campaign.
A Facebook page can become the hub of a massive mobilization.
Amazing.
But think of the moments I just mentioned.
The achievements they were able to have, their outcomes,
are not really proportional to the size and energy they inspired.
The hopes they rightfully raised are not really matched
by what they were able to have as a result in the end.
And this raises a question:
As digital technology makes things easier for movements,
why haven't successful outcomes become more likely as well?
In embracing digital platforms for activism and politics,
are we overlooking some of the benefits of doing things the hard way?
Now, I believe so.
I believe that the rule of thumb is:
Easier to mobilize does not always mean easier to achieve gains.
Now, to be clear,
technology does empower in multiple ways.
It's very powerful.
In Turkey, I watched four young college students
organize a countrywide citizen journalism network called 140Journos
that became the central hub for uncensored news in the country.
In Egypt, I saw another four young people use digital connectivity
to organize the supplies and logistics for 10 field hospitals,
very large operations,
during massive clashes near Tahrir Square in 2011.
And I asked the founder of this effort, called Tahrir Supplies,
how long it took him to go from when he had the idea to when he got started.
"Five minutes," he said. Five minutes.
And he had no training or background in logistics.
Or think of the Occupy movement which rocked the world in 2011.
It started with a single email
from a magazine, Adbusters, to 90,000 subscribers in its list.
About two months after that first email,
there were in the United States 600 ongoing occupations and protests.
Less than one month after the first physical occupation in Zuccotti Park,
a global protest was held in about 82 countries, 950 cities.
It was one of the largest global protests ever organized.
Now, compare that to what the Civil Rights Movement had to do in 1955 Alabama
to protest the racially segregated bus system, which they wanted to boycott.
They'd been preparing for many years
and decided it was time to swing into action
after Rosa Parks was arrested.
But how do you get the word out --
tomorrow we're going to start the boycott --
when you don't have Facebook, texting, Twitter, none of that?
So they had to mimeograph 52,000 leaflets
by sneaking into a university duplicating room
and working all night, secretly.
They then used the 68 African-American organizations
that criss-crossed the city to distribute those leaflets by hand.
And the logistical tasks were daunting, because these were poor people.
They had to get to work, boycott or no,
so a massive carpool was organized,
again by meeting.
No texting, no Twitter, no Facebook.
They had to meet almost all the time to keep this carpool going.
Today, it would be so much easier.
We could create a database, available rides and what rides you need,
have the database coordinate, and use texting.
We wouldn't have to meet all that much.
But again, consider this:
the Civil Rights Movement in the United States
navigated a minefield of political dangers,
faced repression and overcame, won major policy concessions,
navigated and innovated through risks.
In contrast, three years after Occupy sparked
that global conversation about inequality,
the policies that fueled it are still in place.
Europe was also rocked by anti-austerity protests,
but the continent didn't shift its direction.
In embracing these technologies,
are we overlooking some of the benefits of slow and sustained?
To understand this,
I went back to Turkey about a year after the Gezi protests
and I interviewed a range of people,
from activists to politicians,
from both the ruling party and the opposition party and movements.
I found that the Gezi protesters were despairing.
They were frustrated,
and they had achieved much less than what they had hoped for.
This echoed what I'd been hearing around the world
from many other protesters that I'm in touch with.
And I've come to realize that part of the problem
is that today's protests have become a bit like climbing Mt. Everest
with the help of 60 Sherpas,
and the Internet is our Sherpa.
What we're doing is taking the fast routes
and not replacing the benefits of the slower work.
Because, you see,
the kind of work that went into organizing
all those daunting, tedious logistical tasks
did not just take care of those tasks,
they also created the kind of organization that could think together collectively
and make hard decisions together,
create consensus and innovate, and maybe even more crucially,
keep going together through differences.
So when you see this March on Washington in 1963,
when you look at that picture,
where this is the march where Martin Luther King gave his famous
"I have a dream" speech, 1963,
you don't just see a march and you don't just hear a powerful speech,
you also see the painstaking, long-term work that can put on that march.
And if you're in power,
you realize you have to take the capacity signaled by that march,
not just the march, but the capacity signaled by that march, seriously.
In contrast, when you look at Occupy's global marches
that were organized in two weeks,
you see a lot of discontent,
but you don't necessarily see teeth that can bite over the long term.
And crucially, the Civil Rights Movement innovated tactically
from boycotts to lunch counter sit-ins to pickets to marches to freedom rides.
Today's movements scale up very quickly without the organizational base
that can see them through the challenges.
They feel a little like startups that got very big
without knowing what to do next,
and they rarely manage to shift tactically
because they don't have the depth of capacity
to weather such transitions.
Now, I want to be clear: The magic is not in the mimeograph.
It's in that capacity to work together, think together collectively,
which can only be built over time with a lot of work.
To understand all this,
I interviewed a top official from the ruling party in Turkey,
and I ask him, "How do you do it?"
They too use digital technology extensively, so that's not it.
So what's the secret?
Well, he told me.
He said the key is he never took sugar with his tea.
I said, what has that got to do with anything?
Well, he said, his party starts getting ready for the next election
the day after the last one,
and he spends all day every day meeting with voters in their homes,
in their wedding parties, circumcision ceremonies,
and then he meets with his colleagues to compare notes.
With that many meetings every day, with tea offered at every one of them,
which he could not refuse, because that would be rude,
he could not take even one cube of sugar per cup of tea,
because that would be many kilos of sugar, he can't even calculate how many kilos,
and at that point I realized why he was speaking so fast.
We had met in the afternoon, and he was already way over-caffeinated.
But his party won two major elections
within a year of the Gezi protests with comfortable margins.
To be sure, governments have different resources to bring to the table.
It's not the same game, but the differences are instructive.
And like all such stories, this is not a story just of technology.
It's what technology allows us to do converging with what we want to do.
Today's social movements want to operate informally.
They do not want institutional leadership.
They want to stay out of politics because they fear corruption and cooptation.
They have a point.
Modern representative democracies are being strangled in many countries
by powerful interests.
But operating this way makes it hard for them
to sustain over the long term and exert leverage over the system,
which leads to frustrated protesters dropping out,
and even more corrupt politics.
And politics and democracy without an effective challenge hobbles,
because the causes that have inspired the modern recent movements are crucial.
Climate change is barreling towards us.
Inequality is stifling human growth and potential and economies.
Authoritarianism is choking many countries.
We need movements to be more effective.
Now, some people have argued that the problem is
today's movements are not formed of people who take as many risks as before,
and that is not true.
From Gezi to Tahrir to elsewhere,
I've seen people put their lives and livelihoods on the line.
It's also not true, as Malcolm Gladwell claimed,
that today's protesters form weaker virtual ties.
No, they come to these protests, just like before,
with their friends, existing networks,
and sometimes they do make new friends for life.
I still see the friends that I made
in those Zapatista-convened global protests more than a decade ago,
and the bonds between strangers are not worthless.
When I got tear-gassed in Gezi,
people I didn't know helped me and one another instead of running away.
In Tahrir, I saw people, protesters,
working really hard to keep each other safe and protected.
And digital awareness-raising is great,
because changing minds is the bedrock of changing politics.
But movements today have to move beyond participation at great scale very fast
and figure out how to think together collectively,
develop strong policy proposals, create consensus,
figure out the political steps and relate them to leverage,
because all these good intentions and bravery and sacrifice by itself
are not going to be enough.
And there are many efforts.
In New Zealand, a group of young people are developing a platform called Loomio
for participatory decision making at scale.
In Turkey, 140Journos are holding hack-a-thons
so that they support communities as well as citizen journalism.
In Argentina, an open-source platform called DemocracyOS
is bringing participation to parliaments and political parties.
These are all great, and we need more,
but the answer won't just be better online decision-making,
because to update democracy, we are going to need to innovate at every level,
from the organizational to the political to the social.
Because to succeed over the long term,
sometimes you do need tea without sugar
along with your Twitter.
Thank you.
(Applause)
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