Taking Our Country Back

The Crafting of Networked Politics from Howard Dean to Barack Obama
Erscheinungsjahr 2012
ISBN: 978-0-19-993678-6
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 248 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 383 g

Reihe: Oxford Studies in Digital Politics

Taking Our Country Back presents the previously untold history of the uptake of new media in Democratic electoral campaigning over the last decade. Drawing on open-ended interviews with more than fifty political staffers, fieldwork during the 2008 primaries and general election, and archival research, Daniel Kreiss shows how a group of young, technically-skilled internet staffers came together on the Howard Dean campaign and created a series of innovations
in organization, tools, and practice that have changed the campaign game. After the election, these individuals founded an array of consulting firms and training organizations and staffed prominent Democratic campaigns. In the process, they carried their innovations across Democratic politics and contributed
to a number of electoral victories, including Barack Obama's historic bid for the presidency. In revealing this history, the book provides a rich empirical look at the communication tools, practices, and infrastructure that shape contemporary online campaigning.

Through a detailed history of new media and political campaigning, Taking Our Country Back contributes to an interdisciplinary body of scholarship from communication, sociology, and political science. The book theorizes processes of innovation in online electoral politics and gives readers a new understanding of how the internet and its use by the Dean campaign have fundamentally changed the field of political campaigning. Kreiss shows how these innovations, exemplified by the Dean and
Obama campaigns, were the product of the movement of staffers between industries and within organizational structures. Such movement provided a space for technical development and incentives for experimentation. Taking Our Country Back is a serious and vital analysis, both on-the-ground and theoretical, of
how a small group of internet staffers transformed what campaigning means today and how cultural work mobilizes and motivates supporters to participate in collective action.

Zielgruppe

Communication, sociology, and political science scholars.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kreiss, Daniel

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Kultur Politische Propaganda & Kampagnen, Politik & Medien
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Politische Führung
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Kommunikationswissenschaften Kommunikation & Medien in der Politik
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Wahlen und Volksabstimmungen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: Innovation, Infrastructure, and Organization in New Media Campaigning
Chapter 2: Crafting Networked Politics
Chapter 3: Dean's Demise and Taking on Bush
Chapter 4: Wiring the Party
Chapter 5: Organizing the Obama Campaign
Chapter 6: Mobilizing for Victory
Conclusion: New Media Campaigning from Dean to Obama
Bibliography
Notes

Über Autor(innen)

Kreiss, Daniel
Daniel Kreiss, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

Daniel Kreiss is Assistant Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.