The Permanent Campaign: New Media, New Politics: 81 (Digital Formations) - Hardcover

"`The Permanent Campaign' offers an important and provocative new perspective on the changes occurring within politics as it enters the Digital Age. Through a series of innovative analyses of popular online social spaces such as Facebook, Twitter, and the blogosphere the authors show how the Web 2.0 environment creates a more networked, transient and `moment'- based campaign environment that fundamentally challenges parties' and candidates' ability to maintain a coherent, durable and visible presence. The result is a new understanding of the notion of the `permanent campaign' that moves it beyond the standard temporal approach adopted within political science to a more ubiquitous social and spatially embedded concept, in which `flux' itself becomes the new permanence." (Rachel Gibson, University of Manchester) "`The Permanent Campaign' offers an important and provocative new perspective on the changes occurring within politics as it enters the Digital Age. Through a series of innovative analyses of popular online social spaces such as Facebook, Twitter, and the blogosphere the authors show how the Web 2.0 environment creates a more networked, transient and `moment'- based campaign environment that fundamentally challenges parties' and candidates' ability to maintain a coherent, durable and visible presence. The result is a new understanding of the notion of the `permanent campaign' that moves it beyond the standard temporal approach adopted within political science to a more ubiquitous social and spatially embedded concept, in which `flux' itself becomes the new permanence." (Rachel Gibson, University of Manchester)

From the social media-based 2008 Obama election campaign to the civic protest and political revolutions of the 2011 Arab Spring, the past few years have been marked by a widespread and complex shift in the political landscape, as the rise of participatory platforms - such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and blogs - have multiplied the venues for political communication and activism. This book explores the emergence of a permanent campaign - the need for constant readiness - on networked communication platforms, focusing on political moments, crises and elections in Canada, the U.S.A., and Australia. The book chapters investigate the proliferation of new political actors and communicators: political bloggers, advocacy groups, diverse publics, and political party staff as they engage in political maneuvers across participatory platforms. With in-depth analyses of some of the most well-known participatory media today, this book offers a critical assessment of the constant efforts at managing the plurality of voices that characterize contemporary politics.