Zeynep Tufekci

Zeynep Tufekci is a writer, academic, and self-styled "techno-sociologist" who primarily writes about the effect of technology on politics and society. She is an assistant professor at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina and a faculty associate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. In 2015, she was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow in the Social Sciences and Humanities for the inaugural class. Tufekci has been a regular contributor to The Atlantic and currently is a monthly contributor for the New York Times Op-Ed page on topics related to technology's social impact.

Tufekci was born in Turkey and worked as a computer programmer before becoming an academic and turning her attention to social science.

Her research and publications include topics such as the effect of big data on politics and the public sphere, how social media affects social movements , and the privacy and security vulnerabilities exposed by the coming Internet of Things. In general, she has sought to outline the potential negative societal consequences of social media and big data while not rejecting these phenomena outright. She gave a TED talk in October 2014 on online social change, for example, which argued that while technology can make organizing social movements easier, it does not necessarily lead to better outcomes. She was also 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.