Name: Online social change: easy to organize, hard to win
Uploaded: 2015-02-02T16:02:54Z
Duration: 16 min 2 s
Description: Today, a single email can launch a worldwide movement. But as sociologist Zeynep Tufekci suggests, even though online activism is easy to grow, it often doesn't last. Why? She compares modern movements -- Gezi, Ukraine, Hong Kong -- to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and uncovers a surprising benefit of organizing protest movements the way it happened before Twitter.

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Today, a single email can launch a worldwide movement. But as sociologist Zeynep Tufekci suggests, even though online activism is easy to grow, it often doesn't last. Why? She compares modern movements -- Gezi, Ukraine, Hong Kong -- to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and uncovers a surprising benefit of organizing protest movements the way it happened before Twitter.

Online social change: easy to organize, hard to win

Digital tools make it easier than ever for protests to go viral, as seen when a single tweet in Turkey forced national media to break censorship. Movements like Occupy and the Arab Spring gained global attention overnight, yet their lasting political impact often fell short of their energy and scale. The hard, slow work of organizing—once required for action—built skills and trust that new movements now often lack. Sustainable change demands more than mass mobilization; it requires building deep capacity for collective decision-making and strategy.