Controlling the Message: New Media in American Political Campaigns

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Victoria A. Farrar-Myers, Justin S. Vaughn
NYU Press, Mar 27, 2015 - Computers - 316 pages

Choice Outstanding Academic Title of 2016

From the presidential race to the battle for the office of New York City mayor, American political candidates’ approach to new media strategy is increasingly what makes or breaks their campaign. Targeted outreach on Facebook and Twitter, placement of a well-timed viral ad, and the ability to roll with the memes, flame wars, and downvotes that might spring from ordinary citizens’ engagement with the issues—these skills are heralded as crucial for anyone hoping to get their views heard in a chaotic election cycle. But just how effective are the kinds of media strategies that American politicians employ? And what effect, if any, do citizen-created political media have on the tide of public opinion?

In Controlling the Message, Farrar-Myers and Vaughn curate a series of case studies that use real-time original research from the 2012 election season to explore how politicians and ordinary citizens use and consume new media during political campaigns. Broken down into sections that examine new media strategy from the highest echelons of campaign management all the way down to passive citizen engagement with campaign issues in places like online comment forums, the book ultimately reveals that political messaging in today’s diverse new media landscape is a fragile, unpredictable, and sometimes futile process. The result is a collection that both interprets important historical data from a watershed campaign season and also explains myriad approaches to political campaign media scholarship—an ideal volume for students, scholars, and political analysts alike.

 

Contents

Strategic Communication in a Networked Age
13
Congressional Campaigns Motivations for Social Media Adoption
32
Surrogates or Competitors? Social Media Use by Independent
53
The Competition to Control Campaign Messages on YouTube
74
Campaign News in the Time of Twitter
93
New and Traditional Media Reportage on Electoral
113
Traditional Media Social Media and Different Presidential
136
The Influence of UserControlled Messages
155
Online Political Participation and
181
Is Laughter the Best Medicine for Politics? Commercial versus
200
Comment Forum Speech as a Mirror of Mainstream Discourse
221
Campaigns Social Media and Political Incivility
245
The Political Effect of Internet News
270
Message Control at the Margins
302
Index
311
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About the author (2015)

Victoria A. Farrar-Myers is an award-winning scholar and teacher, and a former Fulbright Distinguished Chair and APSA Congressional Fellow. Her publications include Scripted for Change and Legislative Labyrinth. Justin S. Vaughn is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Boise State University. His publications include Czars in the White House and Women and the White House.