(This originally appeared as “Why Governments Use Broadcast TV and Dissidents Use Twitter” on The Atlantic.com) Last March I was walking past Gezi Park with a Turkish friend at dusk. He had just joined me from prayers and I asked him what he thought about the brewing debate over […]
(This post originally appeared as “Let’s Build Democracy Robots” on Slate. Read Jillian York’s great retort “No We Should Not Build Pro-Democracy Twitter Bots“) Most Twitter users try to ignore messages from robot accounts. But maybe we should be putting bots to work for a more noble cause—democracy. One estimate […]
After analyzing over 3 million tweets, gigabytes of YouTube content and thousands of blog posts, a new study finds that social media played a central role in shaping political debates in the Arab Spring. Conversations about revolution often preceded major events on the ground, and social media carried inspiring stories […]
Featured in Christian Science Monitor: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0510/In-Libya-perfecting-the-art-of-revolution-by-Twitter