141 | Zeynep Tufekci on Information and Attention in a Networked World

<p>In a world flooded with information, everybody necessarily makes choices about what we pay attention to. This basic fact can be manipulated in any number of ways, from advertisers micro-targeting specific groups to repressive governments flooding social media with misinformation, or for that matter well-meaning people passing along news from sketchy sources. Zeynep Tufekci is a sociologist who studies the flow of information and its impact on society, especially through social media. She has provided insightful analyses of protest movements, online privacy, and the Covid-19 pandemic. We talk about how technology has been shaping the information space we all inhabit.</p><p><em>Support Mindscape on&nbsp;</em><a href="https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Patreon</em></a><em>.</em></p><p>Zeynep Tufekci received a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Texas-Austin. She is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and will be a Visiting Professor at the Craig Newmark Center for Journalism Ethics and Security at Columbia University. She is the author of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.twitterandteargas.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest</em></a>. Her writing has appeared in&nbsp;<em>The New York Times, Scientific American, The Atlantic</em>, and elsewhere, and she publishes the&nbsp;<em>Insight</em>&nbsp;newsletter on Substack.</p><ul><li><a href="http://technosociology.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Web site</a></li><li><a href="https://sils.unc.edu/people/faculty/profiles/Zeynep-Tufekci" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">UNC web page</a></li><li><a href="https://zeynep.substack.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Insight @ Substack</a></li><li><a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=XUODawIAAAAJ&amp;hl=en" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_bla