Zeynep Tufekci will be attending #rp12 and offering their substantial academic expertise on the civil movements in the Arab world. The assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill at the School of Information and Library Science focuses on the tensions between technology and social interactions. Zeynep Tufekci bloggs for technosociology, investigating the interactions between technology and social, cultural, and political developments. Tufekci will be able to shed new light on the much discussed question of how far social media has energised the protest movement in the Middle East and North Africa.