The arrival of the participatory web 2.0 has been hailed by many as a media revolution, bringing with it new tools and possibilities for direct political action. Through specialised online platforms, mainstream social media or blogs, citizens in many countries are increasingly seeking to have their voices heard online, whether it is to lobby, to support or to complain about their elected representatives. Politicians, too, are adopting "new media" in specific ways, though they are often criticised for failing to seize the full potential of online tools to enter into dialogue with their electorates. Bringing together perspectives from around the world, this volume examines emerging forms of citizen participation in the face of the evolving logics of political communication, and provides a unique and original focus on the gap which exists between political uses of digital media by the politicians and by the people they represent.

This book discusses the implications of recent innovations in information and communication technology for civic and political engagement. The international mix of contributions offers insights across a broad spectrum of studies into the form of engagement: explaining the reasons, incentives and motivations for engaging, and the different forms and levels of engagement; contrasting traditional and non-traditional forms of engagement and how they interlink; and asking why people utilize or avoid certain forms of engagement. It is a must-read for any scholar interested in the impact of social media on citizens’ propensity to get involved in political actions. It depicts the role that parties, organizations and peers play in mobilizing or demobilizing others and how online behaviour can act as a springboard into what might be called real-world politics. The book gathers together prominent scholars, who offer their understanding of social and political phenomena and give theoretical and empirical insights into the highly complex questions around political participation in the digital age. ​ This book was originally published as a special issue of Political Communication.

This book considers the radical effects the emergence of social media and digital politics have had on the way that advocacy organisations mobilise and organise citizens into political participation. It argues that these changes are due not only to technological advancement but are also underpinned by hybrid media systems, new political narratives, and a new networked generation of political actors. The author empirically analyses the emergence and consolidation within advanced democracies of online campaigning organisations, such as MoveOn, 38 Degrees, Getup and AVAAZ. Vromen shows that they have become leading political advocates, and influential on both national and international level governance. The book critically engages with this digital disruption of traditional patterns of political mobilisation and organisation, and highlights the challenges in embracing new ideas such as entrepreneurialism and issue-driven politics. It will be of interest to advanced students and scholars in political participation and citizen politics, interest groups, civil society organisations, e-government and politics and social media.

There is widespread concern that the Internet is exacerbating inequalities between the information rich and poor.

Technological, cultural and economic forces are transforming political communication, posing challenges and opportunities for politicians and media organisations, while at the same time many governments and civil society express concerns about the extent and nature of political empowerment and civic engagement. This book offers an international perspective on current thinking and practice about civic and audience empowerment, focusing on the ways and means through which media can empower or dis-empower citizens as audiences. It features theoretical and empirical chapters that draw specific attention to a reappraisal of the theories, methods and issues that inform our understanding of citizens and audiences in contemporary politics. The authors address the following questions: How much and what sorts of civic and audience empowerment are most desirable, and how does this differ cross-nationally? How do citizens relate to private and public spaces? How do citizens function in online, networked, liminal and alternative spaces? How do audiences of ‘non-political’ media spaces relate their experiences to politics? How are political parties and movements utilising audiences as co-creators of political communication and what are the consequences for democracy? With examples from the UK, USA, Holland, France, Germany, The Middle East, South Africa and Mexico, this innovative volume will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, marketing, journalism, cultural studies, public relations, media and international relations.

This authoritative and comprehensive survey of political communication draws together a team of the world′s leading scholars to provide a state-of-the-art review that sets the agenda for future study. It is divided into five sections: Part One: explores the macro-level influences on political communication such as the media industry, new media, technology, and political systems Part Two: takes a grassroots perspective of the influences of social networks - real and online - on political communication Part Three: discusses methodological advances in political communication research Part Four: focuses on power and how it is conceptualized in political communication Part Five: provides an international, regional, and comparative understanding of political communication in its various contexts The SAGE Handbook of Political Communication is an essential benchmark publication for advanced students, researchers and practitioners in the fields of politics, media and communication, sociology and research methods.

This book focuses on the impact of digital media use for political engagement across varied geographic and political contexts, using a diversity of methodological approaches and datasets. The book addresses an important gap in the contemporary literature on digital politics, identifying context dependent and transcendent political consequences of digital media use. While the majority of the empirical work in this field has been based on studies from the United States and United Kingdom, this volume seeks to place those results into comparative relief with other regions of the world. It moves debates in this field of study forward by identifying system-level attributes that shape digital political engagement across a wide variety of contexts. The evidence analyzed across the fifteen cases considered in the book suggests that engagement with digital environments influences users' political orientations and that contextual features play a significant role in shaping digital politics.