Christopher M. Kelty

... consider the Arab Spring of 2011 ... The question has repeatedly been posed as to whether the Internet, specifically social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, had caused the revolution. Two kinds of answers typicaly follow. First, the qualified yes: these technological media were necessary but not sufficient, they provided new capacities for organization that previous revolutions did not possess. Second, the concerted no: the technologies are important, but the necessary and sufficient cause of the revolution was “the people.” No one (except Biz Stone and Mark Zuckerberg) believes that these tools actually cause revolutions.