Columns to Characters: The Presidency and the Press Enter the Digital Age by
The relationship between the presidency and the press has transformed--seemingly overnight--from one where reports and columns were filed, edited, and deliberated for hours before publication into a brave new world where texts, tweets, and sound bites race from composition to release within a matter of seconds. This change, which has ultimately made political journalism both more open and more difficult, brings about many questions, but perhaps the two most important are these: Are the hard questions still being asked? Are they still being answered? In Columns to Characters, Stephanie A. Martin and top scholars and journalists offer a fresh perspective on how the evolution of technology affects the way presidents interact with the public. From Bill Clinton's saxophone playing on the Arsenio Hall Show to Barack Obama's skillful use of YouTube, Twitter, and Reddit as the first "social media president," political communication appears to reflect the increasing fragmentation of the American public. The accessible essays here explore these implications in a variety of real-world circumstances: the "narcotizing" numbness of information overload and voter apathy; the concerns over privacy, security, and civil liberties; new methods of running political campaigns and mobilizing support for programs; and a future "post-rhetorical presidency" in which the press is all but irrelevant. Each section of the book concludes with a "reality check," a short reflection by a working journalist (or, in one case, a former White House insider) on the presidential beat.
Encyclopedia of Social Media and Politics by
The Encyclopedia of Social Media and Politics explores how the rise of social media is altering politics both in the United States and in key moments, movements, and places around the world. Its scope encompasses the disruptive technologies and activities that are changing basic patterns in American politics and the amazing transformations that social media use is rendering in other political systems heretofore resistant to democratization and change. In a time when social media are revolutionizing and galvanizing politics in the United States and around the world, this encyclopedia is a must-have reference. It reflects the changing landscape of politics where old modes and methods of political communication from elites to the masses (top down) and from the masses to elites (bottom up) are being displaced rapidly by social media, and where activists are building new movements and protests using social media to alter mainstream political agendas. Key Features This three-volume A-to-Z encyclopedia set includes 600 short essays on high-interest topics that explore social media's impact on politics, such as Activists and Activism," Issues and Social Media," Politics and Social Media," and Popular Uprisings and Protest." A stellar array of world renowned scholars have written entries in a clear and accessible style that invites readers to explore and reflect on the use of social media by political candidates in this country, as well as the use of social media in protests overseas Unique to this book is a detailedappendix with material unavailable anywhere else tracking and illustrating social media usage by U.S. Senators and Congressmen.This encyclopedia set is a must-have general, non-technical resource for students and researchers who seek to understand how the changes in social networking through social media are affecting politics, both in the United States and in selected countries or regions around the world. Three volumes.
LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media by
Named a Best Book of the Year By Amazon andForeign AffairsMagazine Through the weaponization of social media, the internet is changing war and politics, just as war and politics are changing the internet. Terrorists livestream their attacks, "Twitter wars" produce realâe'world casualties, and viral misinformation alters not just the result of battles, but the very fate of nations. War, tech, and politics have blurred into a new kind of battle space that plays out on our smartphones. P. W. Singer and Emerson Brooking tackle the mindâe'bending questions that arise when war goes online and the online world goes to war. Delving into the web's darkest corners,LikeWar outlines a radical new paradigm for understanding and defending against the unprecedented threats of our networked world.
Memes to Movements: How the World's Most Viral Media Is Changing Social Protest and Power by
Internet memes are one of today's most unexpectedly potent and creative forms, born of digital culture and -- more and more -- in dialogue with real life. A photo of protesters, for example, in Ferguson, Missouri raising their hands in a gesture of resistance gets replicated eight thousand miles away in Hong Kong, where dissidents are fighting for voting rights. Or a viral video of a presidential candidate-elect can become the impetus for an international march of women in pink "pussy-hats," itself a viral meme come to life. In the long, winding road from grumpy cat photos, internet memes have become a central concept of modern protest. Using social media-driven movements as her guide, technologist and digital media scholar An Xiao Mina unpacks the mechanics of memes and how they operate to reinforce, amplify, and shape today's politics. She finds that the "silly" stuff of meme culture -- the photo remixes, the selfies, the Youtube songs and the pun-tastic hashtags -- are fundamentally intertwined with how we find and affirm one another, direct attention to human rights and social justice issues, build narratives, and make culture. Crucially, she reveals how in parts of the world where public dissension is downright dangerous, memes can belie contentious political opinions that would incur drastic consequences if expressed outright. And further, she examines the future of internet memes as tools in both anti-authoritarian progressive circles and government propaganda. Memes to Movementsunveils the transformative power of memes, for better and worse. In a time when our movements are growing more complex and open-ended, Mina brings a fresh and sharply innovative take on the media discourse.
Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics by
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.Is social media destroying democracy? Are Russian propaganda or "Fake news" entrepreneurs on Facebook undermining our sense of a shared reality? A conventional wisdom has emerged since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 that new technologies and their manipulation by foreign actors played adecisive role in his victory and are responsible for the sense of a "post-truth" moment in which disinformation and propaganda thrives.Network Propaganda challenges that received wisdom through the most comprehensive study yet published on media coverage of American presidential politics from the start of the election cycle in April 2015 to the one year anniversary of the Trump presidency. Analysing millions of news storiestogether with Twitter and Facebook shares, broadcast television and YouTube, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the architecture of contemporary American political communications. Through data analysis and detailed qualitative case studies of coverage of immigration, Clinton scandals, andthe Trump Russia investigation, the book finds that the right-wing media ecosystem operates fundamentally differently than the rest of the media environment.The authors argue that longstanding institutional, political, and cultural patterns in American politics interacted with technological change since the 1970s to create a propaganda feedback loop in American conservative media. This dynamic has marginalized centre-right media and politicians,radicalized the right wing ecosystem, and rendered it susceptible to propaganda efforts, foreign and domestic. For readers outside the United States, the book offers a new perspective and methods for diagnosing the sources of, and potential solutions for, the perceived global crisis of democraticpolitics.
Social Media - the Vital Ground: Can We Hold It? by
This Letort Paper seeks to answer some specific questions on how the U.S. Army, and by extension its allies, can best leverage social media, particularly on operations. Are they a viable and effective messaging conduit? Have they changed the information operations (IO) landscape? Does the United States have the correct force structure, training, equipment, and technology to leverage social media? Finally, how can we train our leaders to better understand and use social media? The impact of social media on the media environment has been widely recognized, as has the ability of extremist and adversarial organizations to exploit the media to publicize their cause, spread their propaganda, and recruit vulnerable individuals. Supporting the growth of social media has been the phenomenal global increase in mobile telephone usage, and much of this increase is in areas where there are existing conflicts or conflicts are highly likely. However, the full implications of the mobile and social media revolution are not yet fully understood. Social media will increasingly have a direct impact on virtually all aspects of military operations in the 21st century. In doing so, social media will force significant changes to policy, doctrine, force structures, and virtually all staff functions within operational units. New training requirements and new approaches to traditional operational challenges will be required. All this will require a wider understanding of social media and the realization that it is no longer an area simply of concern to public affairs officers (PAO) and possibly intelligence (INT).
Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism by
What should we make of the culture of the protest movements of the 21st century? From the Arab Spring to the 'indignados' protests in Spain and the Occupy movement, Paolo Gerbaudo examines the relationship between the rise of social media and the emergence of new forms of protest.Gerbaudo argues that activists' use of Twitter and Facebook does not fit with the image of a 'cyberspace' detached from physical reality. Instead, social media is used as part of a project of re-appropriation of public space, which involves the assembling of different groups around 'occupied' places such as Cairo's Tahrir Square or New York's Zuccotti Park.An exciting and invigorating journey through the new politics of dissent, Tweets and the Streets points both to the creative possibilities and to the risks of political evanescence which new media brings to the contemporary protest experience.