1st Edition

The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics

    560 Pages
    by Routledge

    560 Pages
    by Routledge

    Social media are now widely used for political protests, campaigns, and communication in developed and developing nations, but available research has not yet paid sufficient attention to experiences beyond the US and UK. This collection tackles this imbalance head-on, compiling cutting-edge research across six continents to provide a comprehensive, global, up-to-date review of recent political uses of social media.

    Drawing together empirical analyses of the use of social media by political movements and in national and regional elections and referenda, The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics presents studies ranging from Anonymous and the Arab Spring to the Greek Aganaktismenoi, and from South Korean presidential elections to the Scottish independence referendum. The book is framed by a selection of keystone theoretical contributions, evaluating and updating existing frameworks for the social media age.

    Introduction
    Axel Bruns, Gunn Enli, Eli Skogerbø, Anders Olof Larsson, and Christian Christensen

    PART I: THEORIES OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND POLITICS

    1. Politics in the Age of Hybrid Media: Power, Systems, and Media Logics
      Andrew Chadwick, James Dennis, and Amy P. Smith
    2. Network Media Logic: Some Conceptual Considerations
      Ulrike Klinger and Jakob Svensson
    3. Where There Is Social Media There Is Politics
      Karine Nahon
    4. Is Habermas on Twitter? Social Media and the Public Sphere
      Axel Bruns and Tim Highfield
    5. Third Space, Social Media and Everyday Political Talk
      Todd Graham, Scott Wright, and Dan Jackson
    6. Tipping the Balance of Power: Social Media and the Transformation of Political Journalism
      Marcel Broersma and Todd Graham
    7. Agenda-Setting Revisited: Social Media in Mainstream Journalism
      Eli Skogerbø, Axel Bruns, Andrew Quodling, and Thomas Ingebretsen
    8. "Trust Me, I Am Authentic!": Authenticity Illusions in Social Media Politics
      Gunn Enli
    9. How to Speak the Truth on Social Media: An Inquiry into Post-Dialectical Information Environments
      Mercedes Bunz
    10. PART II: POLITICAL MOVEMENTS

    11. All Politics Is Local: Anonymous and the Steubenville/Maryville Rape Cases
      Christian Christensen
    12. Social Media Accounts of the Spanish Indignados
      Camilo Cristancho and Eva Anduiza
    13. Every Crisis Is a Digital Opportunity: The Aganaktismenoi Movement’s Use of Social Media and the Emergence of Networked Solidarity in Greece
      Yannis Theocharis
    14. Social Media Use during Political Crises: The Case of the Gezi Protests in Turkey
      Lemi Baruh and Hayley Watson
    15. Structures of Feeling, Storytelling, and Social Media: The Case of #Egypt
      Zizi Papacharissi and Stacy Blasiola
    16. The Importance of ‘Social’ in Social Media: The Lessons from Iran
      Gholam Khiabany
    17. Digital Knives Are Still Knives: The Affordances of Social Media for a Repressed Opposition against an Entrenched Authoritarian Regime in Azerbaijan
      Katy E. Pearce and Farid Guliyev
    18. Social Media and Social Movements: Weak Publics, the Online Space, Spatial Relations and Collective Action in Singapore
      Natalie Pang and Debbie Goh
    19. Social Media and Civil Society Actions in India
      Rajesh Kumar
    20. Cyberactivism in China: Empowerment, Control, and Beyond
      Rongbin Han
    21. Voicing Discontent in South Korea: Origins and Channels of Online Civic Movements
      Maurice Vergeer and Se Jung Park
    22. Nationalist and Anti-Fascist Movements in Social Media
      Christina Neumayer
    23. PART III: POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS

    24. From Emerging to Established? A Comparison of Twitter Use during Swedish Election Campaigns in 2010 and 2014
      Anders Olof Larsson and Hallvard Moe
    25. Social Media in the UK Election Campaigns 2008-14: Experimentation, Innovation and Convergence
      Darren G. Lilleker, Nigel Jackson, and Karolina Koc-Michalska
    26. Compulsory Voting, Encouraged Tweeting? Australian Elections and Social Media
      Tim Highfield and Axel Bruns
    27. Not Just a Face(book) in the Crowd: Candidates’ Use of Facebook during the Danish 2011 Parliamentary Election Campaign
      Morten Skovsgaard and Arjen Van Dalen
    28. Social Media Incumbent Advantage: Barack Obama’s and Mitt Romney’s Tweets in the 2012 US Presidential Election Campaign
      Gunn Enli and Anya Naper
    29. The 2012 French Presidential Campaign: First Steps into the Political Twittersphere
      Françoise Papa and Jean-Marc Francony
    30. The Emergence of Social Media Politics in South Korea: The Case of the 2012 Presidential Election
      Lars Willnat and Young Min
    31. Interactions between Different Language Communities on Twitter during the 2012 Presidential Election in Taiwan
      Yu-Chung Cheng and Pai-lin Chen
    32. Social Media Use in the German Election Campaign 2013
      Christian Nuernbergk, Jennifer Wladarsch, Julia Neubarth, and Christoph Neuberger
    33. Comparing Facebook and Twitter during the 2013 General Election in Italy
      Luca Rossi and Mario Orefice
    34. Social Media and Election Campaigns in Sub-Saharan Africa: Insights from Cameroon
      Teke Ngomba  
    35. Social Media and Elections in Kenya
      Martin Nkosi Ndlela
    36. Electoral Politics on Social Media: The Israeli Case
      Sharon Haleva-Amir and Karine Nahon
    37. Social Media and the Scottish Independence Referendum 2014: Events and the Generation of Enthusiasm for Yes
      Mark Shephard and Stephen Quinlan
    38. The Use of Twitter in the Danish EP Elections 2014
      Jakob Linaa Jensen, Jacob Ørmen, and Stine Lomborg
    39. Twitter in Political Campaigns: The Brazilian 2014 Presidential Election
      Raquel Recuero, Gabriela Zago, and Marco T. Bastos

    Biography

    Axel Bruns is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and Professor in the Digital Media Research Centre at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.

    Gunn Enli is Professor of Media Studies and Head of the Research Project "Social Media and Election Campaigns" (SAC) at the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo.

    Eli Skogerbø is Professor in Media Studies and Co-Head of the Political Communication Research Group at the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo.

    Anders Olof Larsson is Associate Professor at Westerdals Oslo School of Arts, Communication and Technology.

    Christian Christensen is Professor of Journalism at Stockholm University.

     

    "Comprehensive and definitive, this is an outstanding book that provides a panoramic view of politics in an era of social media. From the Mediterranean to East Asia to Oceania, from Scandinavia to sub-Sahara Africa to Latin America, the volume as a whole is truly global, yet with nuanced regional and national analyses in each chapter. Theoretically informed, the research presented here breaks new empirical grounds using latest digital methods. The result is a milestone for our collective understanding of new media technology and comparative politics in the twenty-first century." —Jack Linchuan Qiu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

    "This book brings together top scholars from across disciplines and across the globe to examine social media use in a variety of political systems and for distinct purposes. It is required reading for anyone interested in understanding the many ways that digital communication technologies now are used in political life." —Jennifer Stromer-Galley, Syracuse University

    "The strength of this collection is in its diversity of international and theoretical perspectives, which make it a valuable resource providing a contemporary overview of this quickly expanding area of political communication research." -Caroline Fisher, Australian Journalism Review