Zeynep Tufekci

Zeynep Tufekci (Turkish: Zeynep Tüfekçi; [zejˈnep tyˈfektʃi]; zay-NEP tuu-FEK-chee) is a Turkish-American sociologist, and the Henry G. Bryant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs^[1] at Princeton University. She is also a columnist for The New York Times. Her work focuses on social media, media ethics, the social implications of new technologies, such as artificial intelligence and big data, as well as societal challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic using complex and systems-based thinking. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, she is one of the most prominent academic voices on social media and the new public sphere.^[2][3] In 2022, Tufekci was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her “insightful, often prescient, columns on the pandemic and American culture”, which the committee said “brought clarity to the shifting official guidance and compelled us towards greater compassion and informed response.”^[4]

Zeynep Tufekci
Tufekci in 2019
Born	Istanbul, Turkey
Occupation(s)	Sociologist Writer
Years active	1999–present
Title	Professor
Academic background
Education	Istanbul University Boğaziçi University University of Texas at Austin
Academic work
Discipline	Sociologist
Sub-discipline	Complex Systems Science and Technology
Institutions	Princeton University Columbia University University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill The New York Times The Atlantic
Website	www.theinsight.org

Before becoming a regular columnist, she was a frequent contributor to The New York Times and The Atlantic. She has also written columns for Wired and Scientific American. Prior to Princeton, she was a professor at Columbia University's Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security, a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University^[5][6][7], and an associate professor at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina.

Early life and education

Tufekci was born in Istanbul, Turkey, near Taksim Gezi Park in Istanbul's Beyoğlu district.^[8]

In 1995, Tufekci received a B.A. in sociology from Istanbul University, as well as an undergraduate degree in computer programming from Boğaziçi University.^[9]

Tufekci earned a M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.^[9][10]

Career

Tufekci worked as a computer programmer before becoming an academic and turning her attention to social science.^[3]

In 2012, Tufekci became a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society research facility at Harvard University.^[11]

In 2012, Tufekci expressed concern about political campaigns impacted by and driven by big data in the form of "Smart Campaigns".^[12] This early warning was eventually recognized as prescient after Donald Trump was elected in 2016.^[6]

Also from 2012, Tufekci has focused on explaining social contagion and mass shootings and its direct relation to social media.^[13][14][15] She has repeatedly urged both online and in op-eds^[16] that outlets should avoid repetition of the killer's name and face as well as step-by-step discussions of their methods.^[17][18] The phenomenon of suicide contagion via social media and news coverage is part of Tufekci's analytical work.^[19]

In 2016, Tufekci was featured in a special report by The Economist on technology and politics in which she argues that the increasingly individualized targeting of voters by political campaigns is leading to a reduction of the "public sphere" in which civic debate takes place publicly.^[20]

In May 2017, Tufekci's first book, Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest, was published by Yale University Press.^[21]

She was a regular contributor at Wired.^[22]

In 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, Tufekci was critical of the mainstream media for failing to explain the importance of mask wearing, and is often cited as one of the first to take up the importance of mask wearing in the mainstream media.^[23][24] This led to Tufekci becoming one of the academics who advised the WHO on adopting a mask recommendation.^[25][26]

In addition to her mainstream media writing during the COVID-19 pandemic, Tufekci has co-authored articles published in peer reviewed academic journals reviewing evidence that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is airborne, with British medical professor Trisha Greenhalgh^[27] and environmental engineering professor Linsey Marr.^[28]

Tufekci has given a series of TED talks on online social change, technology, the role of artificial intelligence and machine learning, and the role of social media and tech companies.^[29]

Honors and awards

• 2005: International Communication Association, Top Eight Papers in Communication and Technology for "Digital Divide and Social Mobility: How Much Hope and How Much Hype?"^[30]
• 2011-2012: The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, Fellow^[31]
• 2012-2013: Princeton University, Center for Information Technology Policy, Fellow^[32]
• 2014: Business Insider, The 100 Most Influential Tech People On Twitter^[33]
• 2014: American Sociological Association, The Section on Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology's Award for Public Sociology^[34]
• 2015-2016: Carnegie Corporation of New York, Andrew Carnegie Fellow in the Social Sciences and Humanities^[35]
• 2022: Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree, Brown University^[36]

Works

Books

• Tufekci, Zeynep (2017). Twitter and tear gas : the power and fragility of networked protest. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.

Theses

• Tufekci, Zeynep (1999). Mental Deskilling in the Age of the Smart Machine (M.A.). University of Texas at Austin.
• Tufekci, Zeynep (2004). In Search of Lost Jobs: The Rhetoric and Practice of Computer Skills Training (Ph.D.). University of Texas at Austin.

Critical studies and reviews of Tufekci's work

Twitter and tear gas

• Heller, Nathan (August 21, 2017). "Out of action : do protests work?". The Critics. A Critic at Large. The New Yorker. Vol. 93, no. 24. pp. 70–77.^[37]

References

1. Tufekci, Zeynep. "Zeynep Tufekci". sociology.princeton.edu/. Retrieved 2023-08-22.
2. Brown, Sarah. "Meet the Professor Who's Warning the World About Facebook and Google". www.chronicle.com. Retrieved 2020-10-15.
3. Smith, Ben (2020-08-23). "How Zeynep Tufekci Keeps Getting the Big Things Right". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-10-15.
4. "Finalist: Zeynep Tufekci". www.pulitzer.org. Retrieved 2022-08-31.
5. Singal, Jesse (27 July 2016). "Why Did WikiLeaks Help Dox Most of Turkey's Adult Female Population?". Intelligencer. New York.
6. Abbruzzese, Jason (3 November 2017). "Zeynep Tufekci tried to warn us about Facebook and politics back in 2012". Mashable.
7. Columbia Journalism School. "Dr. Zeynep Tufekci to Join Columbia Journalism School's Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security". March 25, 2021.
8. Tufekci, Zeynep (9 June 2015). "Opinion: How Hope Returned to Turkey". The New York Times.
9. . sils.unc.edu. University of North Carolina. Archived from the original on April 22, 2022. Retrieved 2020-10-17.
10. "Zeynep Tufekci Columbia bio". journalism.columbia.edu. Columbia University School of Journalism. Retrieved 2023-04-26.
11. "Zeynep Tufekci, Faculty Associate". Berkman Klein Center. Harvard University. 24 March 2020.
12. Tufekci, Zeynep (16 November 2012). "Opinion: Beware the Smart Campaign". The New York Times.
13. Frank, Russell (16 February 2018). "The media need to think twice about how they portray mass shooters". The Conversation.
14. Tufekci, Zeynep (19 December 2012). "The Media Needs to Stop Inspiring Copycat Murders. Here's How". The Atlantic.
15. Tufekci, Zeynep (27 August 2015). "Opinion: The Virginia Shooter Wanted Fame. Let's Not Give It to Him". The New York Times.
16. Lopez, German (28 August 2015). "Mass shooters want fame. Here's why we should stop giving it to them". Vox.
17. "Texas police stop naming killer in aftermath of shootings, hoping to discourage copycats". CBC News. Associated Press. 7 November 2017.
18. Schulman, Ari N. (17 November 2017). "How Not to Cover Mass Shootings". Wall Street Journal.
19. Lopatto, Elizabeth (27 August 2015). "How do we stop killers from exploiting social media?". The Verge.
20. "Special report: Politics by numbers: Voters in America, and increasingly elsewhere too, are being ever more precisely targeted". The Economist. 23 March 2016.
21. Heller, Nathan (14 August 2017). "Is There Any Point to Protesting? We turn out in the streets and nothing seems to happen. Maybe we're doing it wrong". The New Yorker.
22. "Zeynep Tufekci". WIRED Magazine. 2019.
23. Meylan, Phillip (31 March 2020). "Did the Media Miss the Mark on Masks?". The Factual.
24. Witte, Griff; Cha, Ariana Eunjung; Dawsey, Josh (28 July 2020). "At the heart of dismal U.S. coronavirus response, a fraught relationship with masks". The Washington Post.
25. Tufekci, Zeynep [@zeynep] (29 July 2020). "I forgot to add yes, I pointed all of this out to the WHO in two meetings with the mask committee, some of the same studies and the logic of why we would not expect a false sense of security like that. This is a review article, so the evidence was already available back in March<" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
26. Smith, Ben (2020-08-23). "How Zeynep Tufekci Keeps Getting the Big Things Right". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-08-24.
27. Greenhalgh, Trisha; Jimenez, Jose L; Prather, Kimberly A; Tufekci, Zeynep; Fisman, David; Schooley, Robert (May 2021). "Ten scientific reasons in support of airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2". The Lancet. 397 (10285): 1603–1605. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(21)00869-2. ISSN 0140-6736. PMC 8049599. PMID 33865497.
28. Wang, Chia C.; Prather, Kimberly A.; Sznitman, Josué; Jimenez, Jose L.; Lakdawala, Seema S.; Tufekci, Zeynep; Marr, Linsey C. (2021-08-27). "Airborne transmission of respiratory viruses". Science. 373 (6558): eabd9149. Bibcode:2021Sci...373.....W. doi:10.1126/science.abd9149. ISSN 0036-8075. PMC 8721651. PMID 34446582. S2CID 237308712.
29. Abbruzzese, Jason (3 November 2017). "Zeynep Tufekci tried to warn us about Facebook and politics back in 2012". Mashable.
30. "Top Eight Papers in Communication and Technology, Part 2". International Communication Association. 29 May 2005.
31. "Berkman Center Announces 2011-2012 Fellows". The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. 12 June 2018.
32. "Fellows: Zeynep Tufekci (2012-2014)". Center for Information Technology Policy. Princeton University. 2012.
33. Borison, Rebecca (14 April 2014). "Presenting: The 100 Most Influential Tech People On Twitter; 99. Zeynep Tufekci". Business Insider.
34. "Section on Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology Past Award Recipients". American Sociological Association. 2014.
35. "2015 Andrew Carnegie Fellows Recipient: Zeynep Tufekci". Carnegie Corporation of New York. 2015.
36. Clark, Brian E. "Brown to confer nine honorary degrees during Commencement and Reunion Weekend". News from Brown. Brown University. Retrieved 24 May 2022.
37. Online version is titled "Is there any point to protesting?"

External links

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Zeynep Tüfekçi.

• Official website  
• Zeynep Tufekci 2019-07-02 at the Wayback Machine at UNC School of Information and Library Science
• Zeynep Tufekci at The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University
• Zeynep Tufekci at TED
• Zeynep Tufekci at Scientific American
• Zeynep Tufekci at The Atlantic
• Zeynep Tufekci at The New York Times
• Zeynep Tufekci at WIRED