Abstract

This short article is a critical response to the insightful article by Elana Pavan where she uses a Twitter campaign to explore the potential "transformative effects" of social media to facilitate collective action. Usefully avoiding extreme theoretical approaches Pavan correctly calls for a more nuanced perspective on the current debates. Her use of social network analysis to provide evidence for this new phenomena, whilst informative, is typical of the limited one dimensional studies whose grand claims are not matched by the investigatory tools necessary for in-depth examination. Instead consideration is given to the recent study by Bennett and Segerberg by way of an illustration of the kind of approach which may be required to critically explore such assertions.