The 2022 midterms marked a transformative moment in American politics, as the combined influence of legacy media and social platforms reached new heights. Traditional outlets like television news and print journalism set the stage, while a vast digital ecosystem—spanning Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and more—enabled campaigns to amplify messages on issues like abortion rights, the economy, and immigration. As these platforms shaped the voter experience in a fragmented and often- polarized me...

Social media and social networking services are integrated into the American political process and have profoundly influenced political communication and participation. Social media platforms have transformed the political landscape by revolutionizing information dissemination, citizen engagement, and public opinion formation and change. Politicians use social media to communicate directly with voters in an unmediated and unfiltered manner. Comparatively, voters use social media to follow ...

The 2020 United States presidential election was a pivotal moment, marked by a global pandemic, economic turmoil, and civil unrest. Amid these challenges, citizen engagement surged, driving record media ratings and the highest voter turnout since 1900. This book examines how these events reshaped political communication and the impact of social and cultural divides on the electoral process. Through an analysis of digital and social media's role in political discourse, the book explores how...

This diverse and unique collection of essays examines a wide range of communication elements and themes in the context of the 2012 election. Topics include the early campaign and Romney’s nomination battle, candidate image, the rhetoric and campaigning of Michelle Obama and Ann Romney, issues of race, persuasive appeals to voters, the use of music and social media, and Obama’s second inaugural address. Studies of Communication in the 2012 Presidential Campaign aims not only to expand the c...

The media have long played an important role in the modern political process and the 2016 presidential campaign was no different. From Trump’s tweets and cable-show-call-ins to Sander’s social media machine to Clinton’s "Trump Yourself" app and podcast, journalism, social and digital media, and entertainment media were front-and-center in 2016. Clearly, political media played a dominant and disruptive role in our democratic process. This book helps to explain the role of these media and co...

Much has been made of the speed and constancy of modern politics. Whether watching cable news, retweeting political posts, or receiving news alerts on our phones, political communication now happens continuously and in real time. Traditional research methods often do not capture this dynamic environment. Early studies that guided the study of political communication took place at a time when transistors and FM radio, television, and widely distributed films technologically changed the way ...

Media events are a central communication tactic used by political communicators in political campaigns and in governmental affairs. Each president has an advance staff that creates mediagenic events to influence the news media, generate coverage and excitement, construct favorable political images, and persuade voters. Advance men and women are visual speechwriters who focus not only on what the politician says, but also on how the candidate looks and the visual message communicated by the...

The book Politico calls “Moneyball for politics” shows how cutting-edge social science and analytics are reshaping the modern political campaign—now updated with a new postscript.Renegade thinkers are crashing the gates of a venerable American institution, shoving aside its so-called wise men and replacing them with a radical new data-driven order. We’ve seen it in sports, and now in The Victory Lab, journalist Sasha Issenberg tells the h...

The symptoms of the crisis of the U.S. media are well-known-a decline in hard news, the growth of info-tainment and advertorials, staff cuts and concentration of ownership, increasing conformity of viewpoint and suppression of genuine debate. McChesney's new book, The Problem of the Media, gets to the roots of this crisis, explains it, and points a way forward for the growing media reform movement.Moving consistently from critique to action, the book explores the po...

Political campaigns today are won or lost in the so-called ground war--the strategic deployment of teams of staffers, volunteers, and paid part-timers who work the phones and canvass block by block, house by house, voter by voter. Ground Wars provides an in-depth ethnographic portrait of two such campaigns, New Jersey Democrat Linda Stender's and that of Democratic Congressman Jim Himes of Connecticut, who both ran for Congress in 2008.Rasmus Kleis Nielsen examines how Ame...

As the number of women in the U.S. Senate grows, so does the number of citizens represented by women senators. At the same time, gender remains a key factor in senators’ communications to constituents as well as in news media portrayals of senators. Focusing on 32 male and female senators during the 2006 congressional election year, Kim L. Fridkin and Patrick J. Kenney examine in detail senators’ official websites, several thousand press releases and local news stories, and surveys of 18,0...

Online social media are changing the face of politics in the United States. Beginning with a strong theoretical foundation grounded in political, communications and psychology literature, Tweeting to Power examines the effect of online social media on how people come to learn, understand and engage in politics. Gainous and Wagner propose that platforms such as Facebook and Twitter offer the opportunity for a new information flow that is no longer being structured and limited by th...