Politics Moves Online

The popularization of the Internet has shepherded a revolution in business and personal communication. But how has online technology been used in mainstream American politics? In Politics Moves Online, Michael Cornfield provides a comprehensive guide to how the Internet has been used in political campaigns. He shows, for example, how candidates such as George Bush and John McCain in 2000 —as well as political action committees and the media —struggled to figure out how to fit the Internet into their ongoing operations. Through a series of insightful cases, he examines how candidates use the Web as a campaign tool and as a fund-raising mechanism, and how voters use the Internet to gather information and become more knowledgeable voters. He finds that while many political pundits have argued that the Internet can be a revolutionary force in politics, citizens and politicians alike have yet to find innovative uses that go beyond conventional political operations.

The impact of the Internet on political communication has been significant and multifaceted: it expanded the reach of political messages; opened the floodgates of decontextualization and intercultural misunderstanding; made room for new genres and forms; and allowed for the incorporation of every previously existing communication mode into complex multilayered documents. Political Communication Online places these developments in their social and media context, covers various disciplinary backgrounds and how they can contribute to a common understanding of the evolving online media landscape, and proposes a novel methodological tool for the analysis of political communication online. Seizov offers an approach that places context at the core of the theoretical and methodological discussion by discussing the traits of online communication that make it a unique communication environment. The book then brings together different disciplines which have important contributions for the study of political communication online but have not been integrated for this purpose so far, such as visual communication, multimodal research, and cognitive psychology. Seizov introduces the book’s main theoretical and methodological contribution to multimodal document analysis, the annotation scheme "Imagery and Communication in Online Narratives" (ICON), and explores how the ICON approach works in practice. Taking four distinct genres of online political communication – news, election campaigns, NGOs, and social movements – the book presents the analyses of convenience samples from each of them in detail. This text features a comprehensive theoretical discussion of vital current developments in online political communication, places these developments in context, and couples that with a practical demonstration of the novel methodology it proposes.

This volume examines the use of new media and technologies to reach voters in the 2008 US Presidential campaigns, and the role these tactics played in attracting new voters and communicating with the electorate. Chapters focus on how the technologies were used by candidates, the press, and voters.

A comprehensive set of resources, this Handbook provides linkages to established theories of media and politics, political communication, governance, deliberative democracy and social movements, all within an interdisciplinary context. Containing the latest survey data, the contributors form a strong international cast of established and junior scholars.

Despite the growth of various forms of online discussion, their impact on American political life is only beginning to be examined systematically. In Politics Online Richard Davis provides a thorough analysis detailing the political attitudes, behavior, and demographic nature of the electronic discussion community contrasting that community with the general public.

So much has changed during the past decade in political campaigning that we can almost say "it's a whole new ball game." This book analyzes the way campaigns were traditionally run and the extraordinary changes that have occurred in the last decade. Dennis W. Johnson looks at the most sophisticated techniques of modern campaigning—micro-targeting, online fundraising, digital communication, the new media—and examines what has changed, how those changes have dramatically transformed campaigning, and what has remained fundamentally the same despite new technologies and communications. Campaigns are becoming more open and free-wheeling, with greater involvement of activists and average voters alike. But they can also become more chaotic and difficult to control. Campaigning in the Twenty-First Century presents daunting challenges for candidates and professional consultants as they try to get their messages out to voters. Ironically, the more open and robust campaigns become, the greater is the need for seasoned, flexible and imaginative professional consultants.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The world of political communication is morphing almost constantly into new areas and realities. Online-only news, Web 2.0 user-created content, hyperlocal news, and the rise of the Twittersphere have all contributed to an ever-changing media environment. Communicating Politics Online captures the constant change of new online media.