New Media Campaigns and the Managed Citizen

[via Smart Mobs]
Description
The political campaign is one of the most important organizations in a democracy, and whether issue- or candidate-specific, it is one of the least understood organizations in contemporary political life. This book is a critical assessment of the role that information technologies have come to play in contemporary campaigns. With evidence from ethnographic immersion, survey data, and social network analysis, Philip Howard examines the evolving act of political campaigning and the changing organization of political campaigns over the last five election cycles, from 1996 to2004. Over this time, both grassrootsandelitepolitical campaigns have gone online, built multimedia strategies, and constructed complex relational databases. The contemporarypolitical campaignadopts digital technologies that improve reach and fund-raising and at the same time adapts its organizational behavior.The new systemof producing political culture has immense implications for the meaning of citizenship and the basis of representation.


Contents
Prologue: The Flows of Information in Competitive Politics

Introduction: The Hypermedia Campaign

The Evolution of Hypermedia Campaigns in the United
States
Information Technology in Campaigns and Elections
Outline of the Book
Chapter 1: Political Communication and Information Technology

Politics in Code
Digital Democracy in Theory and Practice
Political Consultants as a Cultural Industry
The Structural Code of Political Communication
Analytical Frames for Studying Politics and Information
Technology
Information Technologies as Cultural Schema
Chapter 2: Producing the Hypermedia Campaign

The Digital Leviathan
Hypermedia and the Production of Public Opinion
Of Grassroots and Astroturf
Chapter 3: Learning Politics from the Hypermedia Campaign

Software and Surveillance
Political Communication and the Open Information Market
Political Redlining and Issue Publics
Chapter 4: Organizational Communication in the Hypermedia Campaign

The Development of Campaign Organization
Power and Social Control in the Hypermedia Campaign
Chapter 5: Managed Citizenship and Information Technology

TheWizards of Odds
Deviance and Decisions
Citizenship in the Digital Democracy
Political Schema Rationalized in Code
Policy and Process for the Healthy Digital Democracy
Appendix: Method Notes on Studying Information Technology and Political Communication

Methodological Challenges in Studying Hypermedia
Organizations
Conclusion
Glossary

References