Zeynep Tufekci is an academic and writer who focuses on big social challenges that defy disciplinary boundaries and simple answers. She is the author of Twitter and Tear Gas: The Power and Fragility of Networked Protest and writes regularly for The Atlantic and the New York Times, as well as publishing a newsletter named Insight.

“Long before she became perhaps the only good amateur epidemiologist, she had quietly made a habit of being right on the big things.” — Ben Smith in the New York Times

We Need to Talk About Ventilation

July 30, 2020

How is it that six months into a respiratory pandemic, we are still doing so little to mitigate airborne transmission? Published in The Atlantic.

This Overlooked Variable Is the Key to the Pandemic

September 30, 2020

It’s not R. Published in The Atlantic.

Why Telling People They Don’t Need Masks Backfired

March 17, 2020

To help manage the shortage, the authorities sent a message that made them untrustworthy. Published in the New York Times.

5 Pandemic Mistakes We Keep Repeating

February 26, 2021

We can learn from our failures. Published in The Atlantic.

Ten scientific reasons in support of airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2

April 15, 2021

Published in The Lancet.

An evidence review of face masks against COVID-19

January 26, 2021 — Preprint April 10, 2020

Published in PNAS.

The Remarkable Value of Thinking Broadly: A COVID-19 Trifecta

October 28, 2020

Interview with Eric J. Topol, MD on the Medicine and the Machine podcast.

Zeynep Tufekci On Systems Thinking

February 2, 2021

Interview with Ezra Klein on “The Ezra Klein Show.”