As the plugged-in presidential campaign has arguably reached maturity, Presidential Campaigning in the Internet Age challenges popular claims about the democratizing effect of Digital Communication Technologies (DCTs). Analyzing campaign strategies, structures, and tactics from the past six presidential election cycles, Stromer-Galley reveals how, for all their vaunted inclusivity and tantalizing promise of increased two-way communication between candidates and the individuals who support them, DCTs have done little to change the fundamental dynamics of campaigns. The expansion of new technologies has presented candidates with greater opportunities to micro-target potential voters, cheaper and easier ways to raise money, and faster and more innovative ways to respond to opponents. The need for communication control and management, however, has made campaigns slow and loathe to experiment with truly interactive internet communication technologies. Citizen involvement in the campaign historically has been and, as this book shows, continues to be a means to an end: winning the election for the candidate. For all the proliferation of apps to download, polls to click, videos to watch, and messages to forward, the decidedly undemocratic view of controlled interactivity is how most campaigns continue to operate. In the fully revised second edition, Presidential Campaigning in the Internet Age examines election cycles from 1996, when the World Wide Web was first used for presidential campaigning, through 2016 when campaigns had the full power of advertising on social media sites. As the book charts changes in internet communication technologies, it shows how, even as campaigns have moved from a mass mediated to a networked paradigm, the possibilities these shifts in interactivity seem to promise for citizen input and empowerment remain farther than a click away.

Although many developments surrounding the Internet campaign are now considered to be standard fare, there were a number of new developments in 2016. Drawing on original research conducted by leading experts, The Internet and the 2016 Presidential Campaign attempts to cover these developments in a comprehensive fashion. How are campaigns making use of the Internet to organize and mobilize their ground game? To communicate their message? The book also examines how citizens made use of online sources to become informed, follow campaigns, and participate. Contributions also explore how the Internet affected developments in media reporting, both traditional and non-traditional, about the campaign. What other messages were available online, and what effects did these messages have had on citizen’s attitudes and vote choice? The book examines these questions in an attempt to summarize the 2016 online campaign.

How American elections are increasingly vulnerable—and what must be done to protect them Until recently, most Americans could assume that elections, at all levels of government, were reasonably clean and well managed—most of the time. Yes, there were exceptions: some states and localities were notorious for occasional election-rigging, losers often complained that winners somehow had unfair advantages, and money increasingly distorted the electoral process. But even when voters did not like the results, the overall system of elections did not seem nearly as corrupt or warped as in many other countries. That positive view of American politics now seems outdated, even naïve. This new book by Elaine Kamarck and Darrell West shows how American elections have been compromised by what used to be called “dirty tricks” and how those tricks are becoming even more complex and dangerous the deeper we get into the digital age. It shows how old-fashioned vote-rigging at polling stations has been overtaken by much more sophisticated system-wide campaigns, from Russia’s massive campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election through social media to influence campaigns yet to come. Dirty Tricks in the Digital Age looks not just at the past but also toward the future, examining how American elections can be protected from abuse, both domestic and foreign. State governments have primary responsibility for elections in the United States, but the federal government also must play a major role in shaping the system for how Americans cast their votes. The book explores what political leaders are doing and must do to protect elections—and how they can overcome the current toxic political climate to do so. It outlines five concrete steps that state and federal leaders must take to secure the future of American democracy. Dirty Tricks in the Digital Age is a valuable resource for scholars, students, journalists, politicians, and voters—indeed, anyone interested in securing the most basic element of democracy.

This book investigates how institutional differences, such as the roles of political parties and the regulation of electoral systems, affect the development of Internet election campaigns in the U.S., Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. It examines whether or not the “Americanization of elections” is evident in East Asian democracies. While Japan is a parliamentary system, the U.S. and Korea are presidential systems and Taiwan is a semi-presidential system that has a president along with a parliamentary system. Furthermore, the role of the presidency in the U.S., Korea, and Taiwan is quite different. Taking these variations in political systems into consideration, the authors discuss how the electoral systems are regulated in relation to issues such as paid advertisements and campaign periods. They argue that stronger regulation of election systems and shorter election periods in Japan characterize Japanese uniqueness compared with the U.S., Korea, and Taiwan in terms of Internet election campaigns.

The 2008 presidential election provided a "perfect storm" for pollsters. A significant portion of the population had exchanged their landlines for cellphones, which made them harder to survey. Additionally, a potential Bradley effect -- in which white voters misrepresent their intentions of voting for or against a black candidate -- skewed predictions, and aggressive voter registration and mobilization campaigns by Barack Obama combined to challenge conventional understandings about how to measure and report public preferences. In the wake of these significant changes, Political Polling in the Digital Age, edited by Kirby Goidel, offers timely and insightful interpretations of the impact these trends will have on polling. In this groundbreaking collection, contributors place recent developments in public-opinion polling into a broader historical context, examine how to construct accurate meanings from public-opinion surveys, and analyze the future of public-opinion polling. Notable contributors include Mark Blumenthal, editor and publisher of Pollster.com; Anna Greenberg, a leading Democratic pollster; and Scott Keeter, director of survey research for the Pew Research Center. In an era of increasingly personalized and interactive communications, accurate political polling is more difficult and also more important. Political Polling in the Digital Age presents fresh perspectives and relevant tactics that demystify the variable world of opinion taking.

The Internet first played a minor role in the 1992 U.S. Presidential election, and has gradually increased in importance so that it is central to election campaign strategy. However, election campaigners have, until very recently, focused on Web 1.0: websites and email. This book offers an in-depth, comparative analysis of how interactive Web 2.

This book investigates the changing meanings of power and politics in the Internet age and questions whether the political category of the citizen still has a meaningful role to play in the highly-mediated dynamics of an increasingly networked world. To answer such questions, the book analyses and compares the impact of the Internet on the relationship between state, citizens, and politics in three countries: the USA, Italy, and China. The book’s journey starts in the mid-90s and ends in 2016. It pays particular attention to Obama 2008 and Trump 2016 presidential campaigns, the ascendance to power in Italy of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, and to the enduring Chinese government’s struggle to control the Internet public opinion. The book challenges the traditional understanding of power through which the strong typically prevails over the weak. This leads to a clearer understanding of the wider role citizens can play (and must play) in a networked political sphere, while it also warns the reader on the many risks citizens face in a post-truth world. The book challenges the traditional understanding of power through which the strong typically prevails over the weak. This leads to a clearer understanding of the wider role citizens can play (and must play) in a networked political sphere.

Technology and particularly the Internet have caused many changes in the realm of politics. Aspects of engineering, computer science, mathematics, or natural science can be applied to politics. Politicians and candidates use their own websites and social network profiles to get their message out. Revolutions in many countries in the Middle East and North Africa have started in large part due to social networking websites such as Facebook and Twitter. Social networking has also played a role in protests and riots in numerous countries. The mainstream media no longer has a monopoly on political commentary as anybody can set up a blog or post a video online. Now, political activists can network together online. The Handbook of Research on Politics in the Computer Age is a pivotal reference source that serves to increase the understanding of methods for politics in the computer age, the effectiveness of these methods, and tools for analyzing these methods. The book includes research chapters on different aspects of politics with information technology, engineering, computer science, or math, from 27 researchers at 20 universities and research organizations in Belgium, Brazil, Cape Verde, Egypt, Finland, France, Hungary, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Portugal, and the United States of America. Highlighting topics such as online campaigning and fake news, the prospective audience includes, but is not limited to, researchers, political and public policy analysts, political scientists, engineers, computer scientists, political campaign managers and staff, politicians and their staff, political operatives, professors, students, and individuals working in the fields of politics, e-politics, e-government, new media and communication studies, and Internet marketing.

Provides academics, journalists, and general readers with bird's-eye view of data-driven practices and their impact in politics and media.

Political advertising is as important as ever, ad spending records are broken each election cycle, and the volume of ads aired continues to increase. Political Advertising in the United States is a comprehensive survey of the political advertising landscape and its influence on voters. The authors, co-directors of the Wesleyan Media Project, draw from the latest data to analyze how campaign finance laws have affected the sponsorship and content of political advertising, how 'big data' has allowed for more sophisticated targeting, and how the Internet and social media has changed the distribution of ads. With detailed analysis of presidential and congressional campaign ads and discussion questions in each chapter, this accessibly written book is a must-read for students, scholars and practitioners who want to understand the ins and outs of political advertising.