Electoral Campaigns, Media, and the New World of Digital Politics

Political leaders and candidates must campaign in a multimedia world using traditional forums and new digital media, such as Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, email, and memes, to influence elections. Each platform has different affordances and reaches various audiences in different ways, with campaigns often having to wage different campaigns on each of these mediums. Digital media has changed the campaign styles and content of campaign communication, and general campaign discourse, and has had significant consequences for the health and future of democracy.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 352 pages
Publication date: 22 March 2022
Publisher: The University of Michigan Press

Political leaders and candidates for office must navigate a multimedia world to campaign effectively, utilizing traditional forums like newspapers, radio, and television as well as new digital media, particularly social media. Electoral Campaigns, Media, and the New World of Digital Politics explores how Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, email, and memes are used to influence elections, highlighting their affordances and reach across various audiences. Campaigns often face the challenge of waging different campaigns on each of these mediums, with some being crucial in altering coverage in the mainstream media and others remaining underutilized and undeveloped. Economic and social conditions often dictate peoples readiness for certain messages, but the method and content of those messages have changed with great consequences for the health and future of democracy. This book addresses several questions, including how candidates/parties reach audiences that are preoccupied, inattentive, amorphous, and bombarded with so many other messages, how they cope with the speed of media reporting in a continuous news cycle that demands instantaneous responses, how media fragmentation has altered the campaign styles and content of campaign communication, and what this means for how democracies function.

Weight: 542g
Dimension: 152 x 228 x 24 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780472055180