Dr. Scott A. Hale

My recently published book, Political Turbulence, was referenced in a special report on technology and politics in The Economist that examined questions of democracy, data, politics, and social media.

A figure from the book was also included in a tweet and blog post by The Economist:

How social media give voice and power to people who have neither (and to Donald Trump) https://t.co/7TLz4VmHI7 pic.twitter.com/QLoDFTCkz5

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) March 28, 2016

From the special report:

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, is better described by chaos theory than by conventional social science: “Tiny acts of political participation that take place via social media are the units of analysis, the equivalent of particles and atoms in a natural system, manifesting themselves in political turbulence.” One day, say the authors, it [might] be possible to predict and trigger such surges, in the same way that meteorologists have become good at forecasting the weather. …Read more (paywall).

John Naughton referenced my book, Political Turbulence, in his column in The Guardian entitled, “#Twitter crisis? Not if it decides that it can be a smaller, smarter platform.”

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 and are replacing organisations and institutions in some areas of political life. Indeed, organisations increasingly resemble social media platforms in the way they present themselves to the public, with facilities for commenting and encouraging the sharing of content.” …Read more

Stuart Weir has reviewed my book, 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

In an article entitled, “Unless you speak English, the Internet doesn’t care about you,” Fusion Media writer Kristen Brown references my research as well as that of Brent Hecht and Mark Graham. She also includes reference to the Bridge project by Meedan to crowdsource the translation of social media, for which I am on the advisory board.

Scott Hale, a data scientist focused on bilingualism at the Oxford Internet Institute, told me that user interfaces could help break down language barriers by allowing users to interact … in multiple languages at once. Allowing people to easily toggle between languages is one way to break down the linguistic silos that online life creates. …Read more

My co-author Helen Margetts spoke with Deutsche Welle last week about our book, book, Political Turbulence, and a range of topics from the role of social media in mobilizations to the (lack of) sustainability of social media campaigns. An article reporting their conversation is available at http://dw.com/p/1HpSV.

Political Turbulence: we’re ‘dripping with data’ and it may make democracy better

Do social media shape collective action? Professor Helen Margetts, co-author of a new book called “Political Turbulence” says they do. By allowing us to make “micro-donations” it’s easy to join a cause. …Read more.

Ivor Gaber reviewed my book, Political Turbulence, in Times Higher Education (THE).

“Chaotic pluralism…a new kind of pluralism, highly decentred and chaotic” is what we’re living through, if we are to believe the authors of Political Turbulence. The authors, whose disciplinary backgrounds range across political science, computational science and physics, argue that this new status quo has resulted from the intrusion, if that’s the right word, of social media into the political sphere, an intrusion that they describe as “unstable, unpredictable and often unsustainable”. …Read more

My co-author, Helen Margetts, discussed our book, Political Turbulence, on BBC Radio 4. You can listen to the interview or download an MP3 from the BBC website.

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe talks to the American writer Jonathan Franzen about his latest novel, Purity. One of Franzen’s characters compares the Internet with the East German Republic and he satirises the utopian ideas of the apparatchik web-users. The head of the Oxford Internet Institute, Helen Margetts, counters with her research on the success and failure of political action via social media. The artist Tacita Dean laments the ubiquity of digital at the expense of film, and the financial journalist Gillian Tett roots out tunnel vision – both personal and business – in her new book on silos.…Listen now