Not so grassroots: How the snowflake model is transforming political campaigns

Stephen Mills writes: “Campaigning has broken out from the electoral context and evolved into a new tool for business, government and civil society actors. Campaigning is now the dominant form of collective political activity in Australia. Waves of transformative technological change continue to morph campaigning into an intensely mediated activity. Dispersed individuals and locations are linked through television, the web, social media networks and most recently big data. In this topsy-turvy form of politics, what looks to be grassroots-driven may on closer inspection be revealed as organised, coordinated and managed from the centre…”