In the UK and across Europe, citizens are becoming more pessimistic about politics. But we can start to use social networks to drive political understanding and engagement, and to re-energize citizenship

Across Europe there is a substantive lack of engagement in politics and trust in politicians. Gerry Stoker argues that the starting point for the resolution of this malaise is to understand politics as embedded in a set of social interactions. Reinvigorating collectivism requires finding ways to talk about politics but as a by-product of a wider engagement in social networks