Going deep in a viral world | Zeynep Tufekci | TEDxUNC

Zeynep Tufekci, techno-sociologist and Associate Professor at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina talks about "Going Deep in a Viral World." She gives the example of KONY 2012, the viral YouTube video calling for the capture of Ugandan war criminal Joseph Kony. She asserts how the story was too simple to be true and how numerous response videos juxtaposed Kony's message. Tufekci makes a call to action in watching these videos, like TED Talks, to not "lean back," but lean forward in active participation and understanding.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

Hello, everyone.

My name is indeed Zeynep Tufekci,

and it was pronounced correctly
for which I'm very grateful.

It happens about
one out of 100 times or so.

(Laughter)

I am originally from Turkey,
and I want to talk about these talks.

I want to talk about
how ideas take flight in this world,

and I want to talk about

how to think about things,
and how to question things,

and how to use all these ways
of information that we have

to go deeper.

I want to start
by talking about Kony 2012.

I can't see you,
so if this were a classroom, I'd say,

"How many of you heard of it?"

and everybody'd raise their hands almost
because almost everybody had heard of it.

This happened two years ago when a video,

- as you can see
about a 100 million views already,

many of which were racked up
in the first few weeks.

It was a video about Joseph Kony -

and indicted war criminal

who was in Uganda,

and it was this very moving,
compelling 30-minute video

that told a story of good and bad

in very stark, moving terms.

In fact, many of us watched it,

people were moved by it,

celebrities tweeted abut it.

It just went crazy viral.

It seemed like
such an obvious, simple story.

It was told by these people
talking about it.

In this chart, you can see

that tens of millions of people
were talking about Joseph Kony,

and "Let's stop it,"

all these resources
should go into this problem.

This is Jason Russell who is the person
through whom we hear this story.

That's Gavin.

He's telling the story to his son.

It's very easy for us to identify:

Jason looks like just a regular guy,

and his son is very cute.

They obviously - if you're wondering
who the good guys are in this movie

- it's like a movie -

likely candidates.

Who are the bad guys? There you go.

Joseph Kony, in case you missed the point,

Hitler's right there.

It's the most evil guy ever;

probably it was the sense of the video.

Now, it's true:

Joseph Kony is an indicted war criminal.

And it is a problem.

There is nothing
to belittle the real issue

and the real problems in Uganda

that came from that civil war
in that conflict.

So there are
very many problems and issues,

but the story that was told to us

in such a slick moving,
pull-out-our-heart string way

was too simple.

It wasn't even fully true.

It was too simplified and made
into this digestible saccharine for us.

In fact, if you went on YouTube,

and just started looking,

if you went on Twitter,
if you went on social media,

you would find Rosebell Kagumire

who is a Ugandan journalist and blogger.

And it's really an amazing world,

because all she did
was she opened her laptop,

she used her webcam,

there is no slick production [values.]

"Stop Kony," the original video,

was 30 minutes of great production
and great narrative;

this is bad lighting
- look at the background -

she's just in her office or study,
and she's just talking.

But if you listen to her

- and I encourage you
to go follow her on Twitter,

she's awesome -

She tells a complex story of conflict

that was caused by resources
and lack of resources,

and marginalization of people,

and how the Kony story
is six, seven years out of date,

and it's not the problem
facing Uganda right now,

and while, of course,
if that man was caught,

it wouldn't really be on top
of anybody's list on Uganda

to send all their resources
to catch this man,

and the complexities of moving
in a post-conflict world,

and how do you make peace
and how do you... I'm stopping there.

The point is it wasn't the simple story
that you would've thought

if you were one of the 100 million people
who watched the video.

If you were one of the 600,000 people
who watched Rosebell,

then you were digging deeper,
and you could go one more step.

That really was
a very interesting moment for me,

because, you see, I grew up in Turkey.

I grew up without speaking English.

So I didn't have this,
which is Turkish Wikipedia.

I thought you guys
should learn some Turkish.

It's a good thing to do, very useful.

It actually is a complicated language,
but it's nothing like English.

But "Vikipedi."

There you go.
You now know a Turkish word.

(Laughter)

We didn't have it.

Is a professor telling us
to use Wikipedia?

Well, yes, "Don't cite it,"

It's a great place to start.

You can quote me on that.

We've all been there, right?

Wiki-drift; you start some place,

and then, three hours later,
you're reading.

"Why am I reading about slugs
and their digestive system?"

(Laughter)

So I love it.

But I didn't have it!

I did not have Wikipedia, but I had this.

That is my 92-year-old grandma.

If 3D printers are finally invented
and they can print grandmothers,

this is probably what they'll print.

She is like prototype grandma.

(Laughter)

She's perfect.

She had grown up in Turkey

under conditions
when girls did not go to school.

She was 12 when she was
pulled from school,

and was told, "That's it.
That's enough for you.

You're now about to get married."

A miracle happened:
the teacher intervened,

and said, "There's an exam
for scholarships for girls.

So they can go
to the top high school in Turkey."

And the teacher, secretly from the family,

entered her and my grandmother won.

And there was a lot of conflict,

but stuff came together,
and a miracle happened,

and she was allowed to go Istanbul,
to this big, new city

and in a boarding school
this elite top boarding school.

And that thing she's holding
is a trophy they gave her

at the 75th anniversary of her graduation.

She graduated
from high school, then college,

probably the first person in her town,
let alone her family.

And she became a teacher.

And because she had grown up
wanting to go to school and pulled,

and just by some miracle, managed to go,

she appreciated the opportunity
books and education gave.

So when ever somebody came
to the school she worked at,

which I also attended
as an elementary school student,

when somebody came to sell encyclopedias

- Do you know those things? No. -

(Laughter)

Those book things?

Well, there used to be people
who went around selling them door-to-door;

we had them in Turkey, too.

And they all had my name
in their phone book

- which, of course, wasn't digital then -

"Buy Zeynep, sucker grandma"

which meant if I took them to my grandma,
she would buy whatever they were selling.

I loved reading,
and I loved encyclopedias.

So when the encyclopedia sales person
would come and say,

"We heard there's
a Zeynep in this school,"

I would pipe up and they would say,
"Take us to your grandma."

and my grandma would buy me
whatever I could buy:

every single Turkish
children's encyclopedia I had.

(Laughter)

It was awesome.

And I would just read them.

Do you read books?
Comic books or other books?

I would read them like that.

I would say, "I'm going
to read the Ps today."

I would just read the Ps.

Or some of the encyclopedias
were thematic, and I would say,

"I'm going to read transportation today."

I read them cover to cover.
I knew what was in every one of them.

Remember, Turkish, so it's not
an unlimited collection, either.

And I would end up
having questions; that I hit limits.

They weren't in any of my encyclopedias.

I knew I just couldn't get at them.

Now you don't live in that world anymore.

You can go deeper and deeper and deeper.

You can look, and ask, and question,

and I don't live in that world anymore.

Everyday, I pull out
my phone, and I'm always,

"I can look up anything I want."

and if there's some public record of it,
I'll probably find it.

Or I can ask people, experts.

When I have a question that puzzles me,

I can look up someone, I can email them.

This is just amazing.

And what I want to say is

when you hear a talk like this,

there is Bill Gates';

you know, a very successful TED talk.

When you hear his talk,

the thing to probably take away from it

is not what he said in his talk,

but to look at a world
in which what made him successful,

how much of it was him,

what was the structure,
what were the opportunities he had,

where were some of the stumbling blocks?

He, for example, had many opportunities,

because his family was well off,

so he went to a private school
which had computers

when even colleges didn't have one,

so he became a programmer early,

and he was programming
and doing things very early on

which gave him
the opportunity to be first

when software was being commercialized;

complicated story.

My point isn't one thing.

My point is look at these talks
as a question mark.

It's not a world
where you can just lean back

and be one of the people
who does something.

In software, in gadgets,
people who design them have a word:

lean forward gadgets
and lean back gadgets.

Lean back gadgets are the ones

that allow you to lean back
and not participate much,

whereas the lean forward ones

are the ones where you're doing stuff
and participating.

And these talks, while they can be great,

if you don't look at them
as a question mark,

they can seem like lean-back talks.

They can seem like, "Oh, great story,"

because they're simplified
in 12 minutes, in 15 minutes.

We're going to simplify something.

So when you hear something,
pull out your phone.

Is there an alternative explanation
to the extinction?

Is there more to the story?

What else could the CIA have done?

What is the NSA doing?

What's the best balance
between security and surveillance?

What are other questions we can ask?

Very good questions.

Do not just listen to us,
because it's always complicated.

(Laughter)

It's always complicated.

Any question worth solving,
any problem worth tackling,

will be complicated by human factors,

social factors, political factors.

And it's those people who don't just
watch the hundred million viewed video,

but then go watch Rosebell, the 600, 000;

and some of those people
who will then go read,

and some of those people
will maybe become activists for life,

maybe some of them
will become policy makers,

maybe some of them will become

the people who then run for office,
run an organization, who knows?

It's not a world
in which you can just watch from afar

and have these nicely-packaged talks
do the work for you.

If there's a problem you want to solve,

if there's a mark
you want to leave in this world,

just don't just look at it as a period,

look at it as a question mark; always.

But don't take my word for it.
Dig deep, dig deep.

Thank you.

(Applause)