Clay Shirky

In this course, we will define politics as group struggle over rules for allocation of
scarce resources or treatment of people, then ask “What difference does social media
make to those struggles?”
The relationship between media and politics has always been complex. Newspapers
accompanied the rise of democracy; radio and TV have always been tools of
propaganda. Social media tools, such as Twitter, Facebook. WeChat and even simple
text messaging offer new capabilities. They let amateurs publish without professional
intermediaries. They help previously uncoordinated groups to synchronize opinions and
coordinate actions. And they let groups document the results, feeding back into their
new ability to publish.
The goal of the class is to help students think about political uses of social media as
analysts – “What is changing as a result of social media?” – and as designers – “How
could someone use social media to create political pressure?” We will discuss how
groups typically excluded from the political process us social media to pursue their
goals. The work of the class is weekly readings and forum posts, along with three
papers of increasing size and complexity.
To keep the scope manageable, we will study uprisings, but not ordinary electoral
politics. We will pay particular attention to the use of social media to affect interactions
between citizens and governments, discussing interventions or events like the the Arab
Spring, the Occupy movement, and the Wukan protests.