ZEYNEP TUFEKCI

Internationally recognized authority on the interactions between technology and social, cultural, and political dynamics


  • Associate professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  • Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University
  • Her TED “We are building a dystopia just to make people click on ads” has more than 3 million views
  • A “go-to-source” about the social implications of new technologies, such as AI and big data, as well as societal challenges
  • Her book "Twitter and Tear Gas" is described by The Washington Post as a transformative view of the role of digital technology in activist causes
  • Monthly contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and a regular contributor to The Atlantic

Techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci is an internationally recognized authority on the interactions between technology and social, cultural, and political dynamics. She has special expertise in how social change movements are using social media and on the social and moral implications of how we use big data and algorithms to make decisions. The author of Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protests, Zeynep Tufekci is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a monthly contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. Zeynep is also a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and an affiliate appointment in the Department of Sociology at UNC.

 Zeynep brings a unique combination of gifts to her audiences. She is a technologist, having begun her career as a computer programmer. She is a brilliant and creative social science researcher and analyst. And finally, she speaks from direct experience as a participator in a number of the most important social movements in the last couple of decades, from the first to use social media as an organizing tool (the Zapatista movement in Mexico) to the Arab Spring and Tahrir Square in Egypt.

 Zeynep has witnessed firsthand the power of social media as a tool for organizing large numbers of people — and she’s seen the weaknesses unfold when this is how you organize. In her presentations, as in her landmark book “Twitter and Tear Gas”, she takes you inside these movements as no one else can and at the same time offers an essential critique, not just of these new tools and their impact, but more broadly, of the emerging intersections between authority, technology, and culture.

A “go-to-source” about the social implications of new technologies, such as AI and big data, as well as societal challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic, using complex and systems-based thinking.

  • Privacy and surveillance
  • Social media and its effects on polarization
  • Social interaction
  • Social movements and civics
  • Impact of social media on politics, culture and polarization
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Women in Tech
  • Social Networking