Web campaigning - by Kristen A. Foot & Steven M. Schneider

Since the incipient use of the Internet by a few political campaigns in 1994, the Internet has rapidly become a central site of discourse in the political sphere by grassroots organizations, the media, and official campaign organizations. Candidate Web sites have evolved over recent election cycles into significant fund raising and recruitment sites, especially for new citizen participants in electoral politics. As campaign strategies and expenses reduce national television advertising, Web sites offer new public and pedagogical resources in message exposure. Kristin A. Foot and Steven M. Schneider’s Web Campaigning is a book that takes the pulse of the political Web sphere and then provides an in-depth analysis of one significant component—the campaign Web site—and its manifestations in the 2000, 2002, and 2004 elections. Employing a perspective grounded in Cultural–Historical Activity Theory, the authors trace the emergence and evolution of campaign online practices and elaborate on these practices within the Web sphere. Following from case study vignettes that introduce each relevant chapter, Foot and Schneider identify and closely examine the practices of informing, involving, connecting, and mobilizing shared by campaign Web sites, including a critique of “tensions” involved with each practice. The book concludes with an interpretation and evaluation of their findings. As the authors note, the practices of campaign Web sites may have changed little over the past decade, fundamentally, but those practices have increased in sophistication and effect. In the book, the authors clearly lay out a detailed framework for analyzing campaign Web sites that should be adaptable in classroom applications to more recent or current campaigns

Advertising · Business · Grassroots · Interpretation (philosophy) · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Public sphere · Social science · Sociology · Sophistication · The Internet · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Impact of Technology on Adolescents · Law · Social Media and Politics