Predicting political surprises and uprisings before they happen

From the Arab Spring to the successful leadership bid by Jeremy Corbyn or Donald Trump's success in the US Republican campaign: Why are so many surprising things happening in politics? New research by the University of Oxford and University College London has harnessed a wealth of digital data and techniques to try to answer this question. The researchers focussed on the digital traces left by tiny acts of political participation to find clues for why movements or campaigns snowball into significant collective action while others quickly fail. They found that the catalysts for political action have changed - with the personality types of those involved playing more of a part than demographics or charismatic political leadership. Drawing on large-scale, internet data, they linked it to global, real-world events and movements through conducting a series of laboratory, field and natural experiments. They analysed acts such as signing a petition, donating money to a political cause, supporting or liking or sharing something on Facebook, tweeting or retweeting political messages, news, photographs and videos. According to their analysis, an online petition seems to need to attract support within 10 hours if it is not going to crumble into digital dust. Between 2011 and 2015, around 97% of petitions started on the UK government petition site failed to attract even 500 signatures, with less than 0.1% reaching the 100,000 mark set for parliamentary debate.