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SUMMARY:"Social media and political turbulence" - Professor Helen Margetts
  (Oxford Internet Institute)
DTSTART:20160426T130000Z
DTEND:20160426T150000Z
UID:TALK65384@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Professor John Naughton
DESCRIPTION:*Abstract*\n\nThe last few years have seen increasingly frenzi
 ed speculation about the role of social media in political mobilisation. I
 n an important recent book Helen Margetts and her colleagues report on res
 earch drawing on large-scale data generated from the Internet and real-wor
 ld events to show how mobilisations that succeed are unpredictable\, unsta
 ble and often unsustainable. To reach a better understanding of this unrul
 y force in the political world\, the researchers have used experiments tha
 t test how social media influence citizens when they are deciding whether 
 or not to participate. They conclude that a new kind of "chaotic pluralism
 " is the model of democracy that is emerging in our networked environment.
 \n\n\n*About the speaker*\n\nHelen Margetts is the Director of the OII \, 
 and Professor of Society and the Internet at Oxford. She is a political sc
 ientist specialising in digital era governance and politics\, investigatin
 g political behaviour\, digital government and government-citizen interact
 ions in the age of the internet\, social media and big data. She has publi
 shed over a hundred books\, articles and major research reports in this ar
 ea\, including _Political Turbulence: How Social Media Shape Collective Ac
 tion_ (with Peter John\, scott Hale and Taha Yasseri\, 2015)\; _Paradoxes 
 of Modernization_ (with Perri 6 and Christopher Hood\, 2010)\; _Digital Er
 a Governance_ (with Patrick Dunleavy\, 2006)\; and _The Tools of Governmen
 t in the Digital Age_ (with Christopher Hood\, 2007). In 2003 she and Patr
 ick Dunleavy won the ‘Political Scientists Making a Difference’ award 
 from the UK Political Studies Association\, in part for a series of policy
  reports on Government on the Internet for the UK National Audit Office (1
 999\, 2002 and 2007)\, and she continues working to maximise the policy im
 pact of her research. She sits on the World Economic Forum Global Agenda C
 ouncil on the Future of Government and is editor-in-chief of the journal P
 olicy and Internet. She is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. Fro
 m 2011- 2014 she held the ESRC professorial fellowship ‘The Internet\, P
 olitical Science and Public policy: Re-examining Collective Action\, Gover
 nance and Citizen-Governance Interactions in the Digital Era’.\n \nProfe
 ssor Margetts joined the OII in 2004 from University College London where 
 she was a Professor in Political Science and Director of the School of Pub
 lic Policy. She began her career as a computer programmer and systems anal
 yst with Rank Xerox after receiving her BSc in mathematics from the Univer
 sity of Bristol. She returned to studies at the London School of Economics
  and Political Science in 1989\, completing an MSc in Politics and Public 
 Policy in 1990 and a PhD in Government in 1996. She worked as a researcher
  at LSE from 1991 to 1994 and a lecturer at Birkbeck College\, University 
 of London from 1994 to 1999.
LOCATION:CRASSH\, Alison Richard Building\, West Road\, Cambridge
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