Given exponential growth dynamics of infectious diseases, containing an epidemic is straightforward early on, but nearly impossible once a disease spreads among a population.
Zeynep TufekciRead
Political activism is not failing because people are too busy watching cat videos online, but because of a fundamental collapse of citizen leverage on institutions of power like governments and corporations.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Political activism suffers not from distractions but from a loss of influence over powerful institutions.
In this quote, Zeynep Tufekci highlights that the decline in political activism is not merely due to people's engagement with trivial online content like cat videos, but rather stems from a deeper issue where citizens feel powerless against influential entities such as governments and corporations. This suggests that the root cause of political apathy lies in a systemic failure to empower individuals to enact change and hold authorities accountable.
Themes
PoliticalActivismCitizenPowerGovernmentCorporations
In practice
Example use cases
During a political rally, when discussing the importance of citizen engagement in governance.
More from Zeynep Tufekci
All quotes →Remember, the Internet did not create freedom of speech; in theory, we always had freedom of speech - it's just that it often went along with the freedom to be ignored. People had no access to the infrastructure to be heard.
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Attention, to a terrorist group, is often what the well-meaning, outraged response is to your two-bit Internet troll: it is the food that feeds them.
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Much of what ails our modern life is exactly because we reduce the value of a human being to a number, say salary or consumer power.
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You might be tempted to think that China has a Streisand-effect problem, in which trying to censor an event creates even more publicity. But that assumes the Chinese government doesn't understand the Streisand effect, and that can't be right, because if one government understands attention dynamics online, it's China's.
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A 'fair' fight between non-equals is not fair, and being blind to power is an implicit endorsement of the powerful.
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