The Internet has rewired civil society, propelling collective action to a new dimension of citizen autonomy. Yet it has also contributed to radicalisation and conflict. As part of a larger study on the future of digital democracy, I have analysed large amounts of social media data to understand how political polarisation on social media has fuelled the rise of populism with regard to the Brexit vote in the UK's recent EU referendum and its implications for future elections.

Social network analysis provides a large toolkit of quantitative techniques that allow us to understand the structure of relationships of people in the context of their social groups. Using these tools, I have analysed the friendship relationships and conversational patterns of the World Economic Forum's Global Shapers Community, which spans across 450 hubs and brings together young people to work on social impact projects in their cities.

Ideas and concepts that are related to each other can be visualised in semantic networks that represent the degree of connection between these concepts, e.g. to understand the degree of relatedness of meanings associated with individuals, places or entities. Having extracted hashtags from Instagram activities around the WEF Annual Meeting in Davos 2016, I have looked at the way how the event was perceived and experienced by its participants and the general public.