Using Technology, Building Democracy: Digital Campaigning and the Construction of Citizenship is finally out!

I’m so excited to report that my book is finally out! It’s even available from a variety of avenues–straight from the horses mouth (err, press) at Oxford University Press.

This book has been the culmination of my doctoral research, which started in the lead-up to the 2010 midterm elections. It includes additional data from the 2012 cycle and a smattering of 2014 examples, too. More than just giving a run-down of the most recent or most successful tactics in digital campaigning, this book focuses on how these new campaign practices ask citizens to engage in politics–how we are asked to consume and create political information, what kind of content we are provided and who we are expected to share it with, how and when we are given opportunities and encouraged to talk back, and so on. In short, how new messaging strategies construct us as citizens in new ways.  As per a recent conversation, I’m pretty sure it’s the first ethnographic look at the actual process of how campaigns create digital messages, though it follows in recent and excellent footsteps of ethnographic work that has looked at field operations, advocacy organizations, and interview-based work on digital campaign operatives.

Obviously, I’d love anyone that makes it to this blog to take a look, and, as always, shoot me an email if you want to chat about it at all. To request a copy to review, ask OUP!