Is a leader inevitable in ICA?

http://technosociology.org/?p=366&cpage=1

University of Maryland Sociology professor Zeynep Tufekci thinks you need a leader.  She says that "it is wrong to assume that open networks 'naturally' facilitate 'leaderless' or horizontal structures. On the contrary, an examination of dynamics in such networks, and many examples from history, show that such set-ups often quickly evolve into very hierarchical and ossified networks not in spite of, but because of, their initial open nature."

Dr. Tufeckci tries to show that leaderless collective actions naturally end up with a leader coming to the top.  I disagree, but maybe because we're talking about different things.  Citing the current Egyptian revolution, she shows a graph of the most read tweeters who are involved in the revolution. By this I assume she thinks that Wael Ghonim should be considered a "leader" because he is followed the most on twitter.com.  She also cites the "iron law of oligarchy" which states that after enough time in any organization "a group of insiders emerge and vigorously defend their turf, and almost always succeed."

   A leader has authority within the group to make decisions for the group.  Of course, I want to use Project Chanology as my example.  Is there someone within Project Chanology who has authority within the group to make decisions for everybody else? No.  And by design there never will be.  Locally, there are people with more influence who make decisions that are usually followed, but even there no one has a position from which to wield any authority other than the rest of the group saying "ok."  If the rest of the group said no, that has not changed any hierarchical position or decision-making system. It has probably wounded someone's ego, however.

Dr. Tufekci, I believe, seems to think that a collective action must naturally grow to a desire to gain power and control for itself. This is not true.  Project Chanology has one simple goal, expose Scientology's evil side.  It has no desire nor mechanism to take over Scientology, or to become some legal entity with a board of directors and bank account.  It is simply like-minded people working together to accomplish a simple goal. Once that goal is achieved, Project Chanology ends.  IF Project Chanology wanted to continue on from there, then Dr. Tufekci might be correct.  But part of the definition of an Internet collective action for me is that it is leaderless, has a simple goal, and will dissolve once its goal is accomplished.  Which reminds me, I should work on a tight definition of ICA...