this book was ambitious and certainly thought-provoking. Tufekci aims to unpack the complex relationship between social media, social movements, and governments: topics that frequently hit newspaper opinion sections, but are rarely synthesized and grounded in academic theory and history. as such, the scope of this work sprawls across both continents and disciplines. her case studies emphasize the Gezi Park protests in Turkey (due to Tufekci's on-the-ground experiences there), but also allude substantially to Occupy and the Arab Spring. additionally, to keep the book accessible to readers of all stripes, Tufekci attempts to define concepts from sociology, UX design, STS, and more - explaining terms from pluralistic ignorance to technological determinism. I appreciated Tufekci's comfort with contingency and change: e.g. showing how the same forces that grab headlines and fill streets can collapse decision-making, or tracing how information overload has replaced information scarcity in recent years. she avoids taking firm stances on technology, while describing how specific design choices or movement structures can tip the scales for organizers. while a lot of this book was spent in anecdotes, I found her frameworks easy to cross-apply to today's movements. while I got a lot out of this read, the book's organization suffered a little from complexity. some arguments were repeated and others skimmed over, all readers will find themselves skimming when the book explains social platforms or phenomena they already know, and I'm not sure there was a clear progression of ideas from beginning to end. could these hiccups have been avoided? maybe not - after all, Tufekci's only consistent message might be that movements (and histories) no longer hold a narrative core, arising instead from shifting networks of people and ideas in endless tactical and circumstantial rearrangements. "...a rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organisations of power and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences and social struggles..." ~Deleuze & Guattari
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