Brexit, voting, and political turbulence
We are still digesting the result of the UK referendum to leave the European Union, but it is clear many events were played out on social media under the varying influences of social information and visibility that we research in Political Turbulence. We explore these influences further on the Princeton University Press Election 2016 Blog. On 23rd June 2016, a majority of the British public voted in a referendum on whether to leave the European Union. The Leave or so-called #Brexit option was victorious, with a margin of 52% to 48% across the country, although Scotland, Northern Ireland, London and [...]
The Economist: A new kind of weather
A special report on technology and politics in The Economist examines questions of democracy, data, politics, and social media referencing the findings reported in Political Turbulence: A new book entitled "Political Turbulence" come[s] to an intriguing conclusion: social media are making democracies more "pluralistic", but not in the conventional sense of the word, involving diverse but stable groups. Instead, the authors see the emergence of a "chaotic pluralism", in which mobilisations spring from the bottom up, often reacting to events. Online mobilisation can develop explosively and seemingly at random. ... Politics in the age of social media, the authors conclude, [...]
Science: “Important series of creatively and rigorously researched insights”
Arnout van de Rijt reviewed Political Turbulence in Science Magazine. The review, entitled "The social revolution," states that the book ... contributes an important series of creatively and rigorously researched insights into the social mechanics of Internet-based collective action, handing researchers a new toolbox of methods and techniques in the process. ...Read more (paywall)
Referenced in The Guardian
John Naughton referenced Political Turbulence in his column in The Guardian entitled, "#Twitter crisis? Not if it decides that it can be a smaller, smarter platform." The Guardian Bookshop is also selling Political Turbulence for £17 with free UK shipping! In a thought-provoking new book, Political Turbulence: How Social Media Shape Collective Action, Professor Helen Margetts and her colleagues at the Oxford Internet Institute provide empirical evidence that social media are starting to change our politics in ways not yet appreciated or understood. Platforms such as Twitter, they write, are providing "zero-touch co-ordination for micro-donations of time, effort, and money [...]
Reviewed in openDemocracyUK
Stuart Weir has reviewed Political Turbulence in openDemocracyUK. A few years back I was intrigued and captivated, as a largely analogue political animal, by Paul Mason's Why It's Kicking Off Everywhere on the revolutionary part that social media were playing in the Arab Spring and global politics. But for all the enthusiasm, anecdotes and insights, it was ultimately unsatisfying. Here now is a revelatory study, Political Turbulence, which looks more closely and systematically at why "it" – that is, significant collective action – "is kicking off", and why, much more frequently, it doesn't. ...Read more