Helen Margetts spoke about Political Turbulence at the 2016 Oxford Literary Festival on 3 April 2016. [The authors] demonstrate how most attempts at collective action online fail but some give rise to huge mobilisations and even revolution. Those that succeed are unpredictable, unstable and often unsustainable. They argue that a new form of pluralistic democracy is emerging but one that is chaotic and turbulent. ...Further details
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, [...]
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)
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 [...]
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