Social media and new political turbulence

'Political Turbulence: How Social Media Shape Collective Action' by Helen Margetts, Peter John, Scott Hale, & Taha Yasseri (Princeton University Press, $30, 304 pages)

Turkey's Gezi Park protests seem a long time ago. Back when they were still raging in the summer of 2013, parts of the western media were excitedly hailing them as the latest instance of global social media-driven anti-authoritarian unrest. Some optimistically hoped that social media would advance the cause of freedom everywhere, single-handedly helping people cast off regime-wrought chains. 

The reality, of course, is murkier. Deeper academic studies of the effects of social media on politics have only recently started to appear, and have come to a range of conclusions. This book by four academics of the Internet at the University of Oxford and University College London gives an up-to-date account of current research on the subject. We are, the authors write, in the midst of a "transitional period" in the first two decades of the 21st century. There is a structural transformation ongoing in how political information flows. We are moving "from a world dominated by paper, broadcast media, and face-to-face communications, to a world where the Internet is the ubiquitous medium through which communication and coordination take place." The near complete social mediation of information and opinion will have profound effects on political activity.

The book doesn't come up with any particularly bold conclusions. In line with its title, it does suggest that the (inevitable) advance of Facebook, Twitter et al as the main platform on which people consume media is leading to increasingly turbulent politics, "characterized by rapidly shifting flows of attention and activity ? unstable...