Presidential Campaign Communication

Now in its sixth edition, Political Campaign Communication provides a realistic understanding of the strategic and tactical communication choices candidates and their staffs must make as they wage an election campaign. Trent and Friedenberg's classic text has been updated throughout to reflect recent election campaigns, including 2004 and 2006 as well as the early stages of 2008. A new chapter focuses on the use of the Internet. Political Campaign Communication continues to be a classroom favorite and is thoroughly researched, insightful, and is a reader-friendly text.

The second edition of Presidential Campaign Communication is designed to help readers understand and appreciate how the people of the United States use human communication to select their presidents. It explores presidential politics as one of the things about which Americans talk, thereby building relationships, redefining communities, and shaping public identities and priorities. Fully revised and updated throughout, the book’s twelve chapters build on its original argument and examples to highlight four key themes: Presidential campaigns are communication Ð evolving constitutional requirements and the Digital Age create a rhetorical puzzle for aspiring presidents. Campaigning is a quest and each stage invites new strategies and metrics. The varied impact of modes of presidential campaign communication - Laws and rules, speeches, debates, advertising, news reports, social media and entertainment are all means of influencing public debate and electoral preferences. They provide differing ways to reshape political images and perceptions during the evolving campaign. Citizens, campaigners and reporters bring unique agendas to the campaign Ð this ‘trialogue’ of dynamic interactions constitutes communities and contests issues, images and resources. The changing dynamics of the US electorate - Americans have sorted themselves into increasingly like-minded communities which complicates the quest for consensus, resulting in a multiplicity of opinions rather than a strong majority voice. Written with verve and clarity, and richly illustrated with 45 case studies and detailed analysis of the 2012 campaign, the second edition of Presidential Campaign Communication is required reading for all students of politics and the media, and for anyone seeking to understand more fully the system of democracy in the United States, and the central role that communication plays therein.

Now in its third edition, Political Campaign Communication: Inside and Out examines the intricacies of political campaigning through the eyes of both an academic and a political consultant. Unlike others in its field, this text takes a broad view of political campaigning, discussing both theories and principles, along with topics such as political socialization, the role of money, ethics, and critical events. This new edition delves into ongoing changes in the American political environment, with fuller examinations of women and gender, the involvement of social media in political campaigning, political money, and ethics. Advanced undergraduate and graduate students of political communication can make use of updated chapter-by-chapter discussion questions and online practice quizzes.

The 2008 U.S. election was arguably the most important election of our lifetime: the first African American president was elected to office; the candidacy of Sarah Palin marked only the second time that a major party ticket included a female; and the electoral performance of young citizens - digital natives, greatly attracted by digital media - signaled the highest turnout in a long time.Taking all these issues into consideration, this book offers a landmark examination of the 2008 election from a global perspective, with emphasis on the wide range of digital media utilized by the campaigners and how campaign communication influenced young citizens. The authors argue that the use of digital technologies in the campaign, and the success of Barack Obama in attracting young voters to his cause, provides an excellent case study - perhaps something of a turning point in campaign communication - for carefully examining the emerging role of digital political media, and a continuing renewal in young citizens' electoral engagement. The wide-ranging contributions to this volume provide a comprehensive examination of a historic political campaign and election. The book's findings offer revealing answers regarding the content and effects of various forms of political campaign communication, and raise questions and possibilities for future research.

Major textbook introduction to the ways that the people of the US use the process of human communication to select their Presidents. Looks at the function and effects of talk about American presidential politics in everyday life.

Political Rhetoric, Social Media, and American Presidential Campaigns explores how social media influenced presidential campaign rhetoric. The author discusses media use in American presidential campaigns as well as social media campaigns for Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton, and Donald Trump. This book addresses how presidential candidates adapted their rhetorical performances for newspapers, radios, television, and the Internet. Scholars of rhetoric and political communication will find this book particularly useful.

""What makes this book unique is the basic structure: Descriptive or historical chapters, followed by discussions of strategies and tactics of political communication in numerous contexts.""

This volume examines political campaign communication around the concepts of theory, method and practice. It contains studies of political campaign communication using a wide range of empirical, rhetorical, and social science methodologies and reflects the growth and maturity of the discipline of political communication.