Retooling Politics
How Digital Media Are Shaping Democracy

Provides academics, journalists, and general readers with bird's-eye view of data-driven practices and their impact in politics and media.

Andreas Jungherr (Author), Gonzalo Rivero (Author), Daniel Gayo-Avello (Author)

9781108419406, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 11 June 2020

334 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2.2 cm, 0.6 kg

'This book offers a fresh and comprehensive perspective on the needs that digital media fulfill in the context of democratic politics. The wide-ranging analysis explores the needs that digital media provides for political organizations, for the spread of information, and for enabling collective action in the broadest sense.' Jennifer Stromer-Galley, Syracuse University

Donald Trump, the Arab Spring, Brexit: digital media have provided political actors and citizens with new tools to engage in politics. These tools are now routinely used by activists, candidates, non-governmental organizations, and parties to inform, mobilize, and persuade people. But what are the effects of this retooling of politics? Do digital media empower the powerless or are they breaking democracy? Have these new tools and practices fundamentally changed politics or is their impact just a matter of degree? This clear-eyed guide steps back from hyperbolic hopes and fears to offer a balanced account of what aspects of politics are being shaped by digital media and what remains unchanged. The authors discuss data-driven politics, the flow and reach of political information, the effects of communication interventions through digital tools, their use by citizens in coordinating political action, and what their impact is on political organizations and on democracy at large.

1. The rise of digital media and the retooling of politics
2. The flow of political information
3. Reaching people
4. The effects of political information
5. Digital media and collective action
6. Changing organizations
7. Data in politics
8. Digital media and democracy
9. Digital media in politics.

Subject Areas: Ethical & social aspects of IT [UBJ], Politics & government [JP], Media studies [JFD]