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.

This book offers a comprehensive guide to political campaign communication using functional theory as a framework. An authoritative account packed with real life examples from campaigns across the globe, the book examines all of the important variables in political campaign communication. Considering campaign media - from television spots and debates to candidate webpages and direct-mail advertising - it looks closely at news coverage of campaigns, and examines the sources of campaign messages, the various ways of responding to scandal, the process of voter decision-making, and the ways in which context affects a political campaign. Chapters consider a full range of races, from presidential to congressional to gubernatorial, and look at political campaigns in the United States and many other countries including France, Israel, South Korea, and Taiwan. Communication in Political Campaigns introduces readers to both theory and research on the topic, and is an ideal text for courses on political campaigns.

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 American political operatives use "personalized political communication" to engage with the electorate, and weighs the implications of ground war tactics for how we understand political campaigns and what it means to participate in them. He shows how ground wars are waged using resources well beyond those of a given candidate and their staff. These include allied interest groups and civic associations, party-provided technical infrastructures that utilize large databases with detailed individual-level information for targeting voters, and armies of dedicated volunteers and paid part-timers. Nielsen challenges the notion that political communication in America must be tightly scripted, controlled, and conducted by a select coterie of professionals. Yet he also quashes the romantic idea that canvassing is a purer form of grassroots politics. In today's political ground wars, Nielsen demonstrates, even the most ordinary-seeming volunteer knocking at your door is backed up by high-tech targeting technologies and party expertise. Ground Wars reveals how personalized political communication is profoundly influencing electoral outcomes and transforming American democracy.

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.

Despite the central importance of elections to representative democracy, there is no systematic study available of how exactly the parties wage their election campaigns. Examining recent elections in nine countries across three continents, there case studies, all following a common framework, are written by national experts and are based on detailed interviewing and research of the parties. The book includes a lengthy introduction; a comparative study on campaign 'effects'; and a detailed conclusion.

Campaign Communication and Political Marketing is a comprehensive, internationalist study of the modern political campaign. It indexes and explains their integral components, strategies, and tactics. Offers comparative analyses of campaigns from country to country Covers topics such as advertising strategy, demography, the effect of campaign finance regulation on funding, and more Draws on a variety of international case studies including the campaigns of Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy Analyses the impact of digital media and 24/7 news cycle on campaign conduct

""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.""

Examining political campaigns and political advertising through the analytical lens of media literacy, this well-illustrated and timely handbook guides readers through the maze of blandishments and spin that is the hallmark of the modern political campaign. It dissects the persuasive strategies embedded in the political messages we encounter every day in the media and demonstrates the importance of critical thinking in evaluating media stories. Key concepts of media literacy are applied to political advertising in traditional media (newspapers, television, radio) and on the Internet, the new frontier of the political advertising wars. Dealing with blogs, social networking, user-generated Web sites, and other electronic formats familiar to young voters, this lively introduction to the new world of political messaging appeals to readers' affinity for visual learning as well as their ability to discern messages in text. Unique in applying media literacy concepts to the political context while directly addressing students and general readers, this book not only explains but graphically demonstrates both established techniques of political framing and the new avenues of persuasion being pioneered in digital media. It will also interest viewers who like their political news in traditional media but unconventional formats.

To what extent are the techniques of campaigning and media management critical to the outcome of modern elections? This book brings together a group of leading scholars to provide a comprehensive analysis of the role and impact of political communications during election campaigns. They set the context of election campaigning in Britain, and the methodology used to undertand media effects, review party strategies and resulting media coverage, and draw together evidence of the impact of the 1997 British General Election campaign, analyzing how far television and the press media influenced the public′s civic engagement, agenda priorities, and party preferences.

Of the many groundbreaking developments in the 2008 presidential election, the most important may well be the use of the Internet. In Politicking Online contributors explorethe impact of technology for electioneering purposes, from running campaigns andincreasing representation to ultimately strengthening democracy. The book reveals how social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook are used in campaigns along withe-mail, SMS text messaging, and mobile phones to help inform, target, mobilize, and communicate with voters. While the Internet may have transformed the landscape of modern political campaigns throughout the world, Costas Panagopoulos reminds readers that officials and campaign workers need to adapt to changing circumstances, know the limits of their methods, and combine new technologies with more traditional techniques to achieve an overall balance.