Description
This book highlights the diverse methods needed to study a complex media environment, and the nuance and richness of the understanding gained by doing so, by offering examples of political communication research considering multiple platforms simultaneously.
Political communication research that considers multiple media platforms is difficult and expensive to perform, and therefore relatively rare. Yet studying media platforms in isolation ignores the realities of the varied and complicated contemporary media experience, where most individuals consume information from multiple media outlets. Media platforms, from traditional outlets such as newspapers and television to newer online platforms such as social media, have proliferated in recent years. This makes the media environment itself more complex, as classic understandings of how the media function give way to a growing recognition of the hybrid media system, where divisions between content and producers are opaque, and where information is gleaned from increasingly diverse and numerous sources.
Studying political communication across platforms allows better understanding of which types of experiences and effects are universal, and which are specific to particular platforms.
This book was originally published as a special issue of Political Communication.
Table of Contents
1. Studying Politics Across Media
Leticia Bode and Emily K. Vraga
2. In Their Own Words: Political Practitioner Accounts of Candidates, Audiences, Affordances, Genres, and Timing in Strategic Social Media Use
Daniel Kreiss, Regina G. Lawrence and Shannon C. McGregor
3. Issue Consistency? Comparing Television Advertising, Tweets, and E-mail in the 2014 Senate Campaigns
Taewoo Kang, Erika Franklin Fowler, Michael M. Franz and Travis N. Ridout
4. Election Campaigning on Social Media: Politicians, Audiences, and the Mediation of Political Communication on Facebook and Twitter
Sebastian Stier, Arnim Bleier, Haiko Lietz and Markus Strohmaier
5. Learning From News on Different Media Platforms: An Eye-Tracking Experiment
Sanne Kruikemeier, Sophie Lecheler and Ming M. Boyer
6. Platforms for Incivility: Examining Perceptions Across Different Media Formats
Emily Sydnor
7. Ties, Likes, and Tweets: Using Strong and Weak Ties to Explain Differences in Protest Participation Across Facebook and Twitter Use
Sebastián Valenzuela, Teresa Correa and Homero Gil de Zúñiga
