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Political Communication Winter Term 2010-11 – Syllabus

Sep 20, ’10 4:42 PM

It’s this time of year again. The winter term is just about to start and so I had a look at the seminar I’m about to give in the coming months and revised it a bit. I’ll be teaching an introductory course in political communication for first and second year students of political science at Bamberg University. The aim of the course is to familiarize students with some of the major theories and topics of political communication. Below you find a draft of the syllabus with the assigned readings. It would be great to know what you guys think of the syllabus and especially if in your opinion I am missing crucial elements that an introductory course in political communication should have.

General Readings
Denis McQuail. 2010. “News Public Opinion and Political Communication,” in: McQuail’s Mass Communication Theory. 6. Auflage. London: Sage, 503-536.

Donald R. Kinder. 2003. “Communication and Politics in the Age of Information,” in: David O. Sears, Leonie Huddy and Robert Jervis (eds.). Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press, 357-393.

Holli A. Semetko. 2004. “Media, Public Opinion, and Political Action,” in: John D. H. Downing, Denis McQuail, Philip Schlesinger and Ellen Wartella (eds.). The Sage Handbook of Media Studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 351-374.

Winfried Schulz. 2008. Politische Kommunikation: Theoretische Ansätze und Ergebnisse empirischer Forschung. 2. Auflage. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.

Introduction
Werner J. Severin and James W. Tankard. 1992. “Scientific Method,” in: Communication Theories: Origins, Methods, and Uses in the Mass Media. 3. Auflage. New York: Longman, 19-35.

Werner J. Severin and James W. Tankard. 1992. “Effects of Mass Communication,” in: Communication Theories: Origins, Methods, and Uses in the Mass Media. 3. Auflage. New York: Longman, 247-268.

Strong Media Effects and Propaganda
Mandatory Reading:
Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Robert K. Merton. 1949. “Studies in Radio and Film Propaganda,” Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences 6, 58-79. Reprinted in: Robert K. Merton (ed.). 1968. Social Theory and Social Structure. New York: Free Press, 563-582.

Presentation on:
Klaus Merten. 2000. “Struktur und Funktion von Propaganda,” Publizistik 45 (2), 143-162.

Opinion Leaders and Two-Step-Flow of Communication

Mandatory Reading:
Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson and Hazel Gaudet. 1944. “The Nature of Political Influence,” in: The People’s Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign. New York: Duell Sloan and Pearce, 150-158.

Steven H. Chaffee and John L. Hochheimer. 1982. “The Beginnings of Political Communication Research in the US: Origins of the Limited Effects Model”, in: Everett M. Rogers and Francis Balle (eds.). The Media Revolution in America and Western Europe. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 263-283.

Presentation on:
John P. Robinson. 1976. Interpersonal Influence in Election Campaigns: Two Step-Flow Hypotheses. Public Opinion Quarterly 40 (3), 304-319.

Minimal Effects: Reinforcement and Slectivity

Mandatory Reading:
Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson and Hazel Gaudet. 1944. “The Types of Changes,” in: The People’s Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign. New York: Duell Sloan and Pearce, 65-104.

David O. Sears and Jonathan L. Freedman. 1965. “Selective Exposure to Information: A Critical Review,” Public Opinion Quarterly 31 (2), 194-213.

Presentation on:
Natalie Jomini Stroud. 2008. “Media Use and Political Predispositions: Revisiting the Concept of Selective Exposure,” Political Behavior 30 (3), 341-366.

Shanto Iyengar and Kyu S. Hahn. 2009. “Red Media, Blue Media: Evidence of Ideological Selectivity in Media Use,” Journal of Communication 59 (1), 19-39.

Return to the Concept of Powerful Mass Media: Spiral of Silence

Mandatory Reading:
Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann. 1991. “The Theory of Public Opinion: The Concept of the Spiral of Silence,” in: James A. Anderson (ed.). Communication Yearbook 14. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 256-287.

Serge Moscovici. 1991. “Silent Majorities and Loud Minorities,” in: James A. Anderson (ed.). Communication Yearbook 14. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 298-308.

Presentation on:
Diana C. Mutz and Joe Soss. 1997. “Reading Public Opinion: The Influence of News Coverage on Perceptions of Public Sentiment,” Public Opinion Quarterly 61 (3), 431-451.

Carroll J. Glynn, Andrew F. Hayes, James Shanahan [@JamesShanahan]. 1997. “Perceived Support for One’s Opinion and Willingness to Speak Out,” Public Opinion Quarterly 61 (3), 452-463.

Agenda Setting and Priming

Mandatory Reading:
Maxwell E. McCombs and Donald L. Shaw. 1972. “The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media,” Public Opinion Quarterly 36 (2), 176-187.

Shanto Iyengar and Donald R. Kinder. 1987. “A Primordial Power?” in: News that Matters: Television and American Opinion. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1-5.

Shanto Iyengar and Donald R. Kinder. 1987. “The Priming Effect,” in: News that Matters: Television and American Opinion. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 63-72.

Presentation on:
Lutz Erbring, Edie N. Goldenberg and Arthur H. Miller. 1980. “Front-Page News and Real-World Cues: A New Look at Agenda-Setting by the Media,” American Journal of Political Science 24 (1), 16-49.

Steven H. Chaffee and Miriam J. Metzger. 2001. “The End of Mass Communication?” Mass Communication and Society 4 (4), 365-79.

Framing

Mandatory Reading:
Dennis Chong and James N. Druckman. 2007. “Framing Theory,” Annual Review of Political Science 10, 103-126.

Robert M. Entman. 1993. “Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm,” Journal of Communication 43 (4), 51-58.

Presentation on:
James N. Druckman. 2004. “Political Preference Formation: Competition, Deliberation, and the (Ir)relevance of Framing Effects,” American Political Science Review 98 (4), 671-686.

Dietram A. Scheufele [Blog] [@dietram] and David Tewksbury. 2007. “Framing, Agenda-Setting, and Priming: The Evolution of Three Media-Effects Models,” Journal of Communication 57 (1), 9-20.

Knowledge Gap and Digital Divide

Mandatory Reading:
Philip J. Tichenor, George A. Donohue and Clarice N. Olien. 1970. “Mass Media Flow and Differential Growth in Knowledge,” Public Opinion Quarterly 34 (2), 159-170.

Pippa Norris [Blog]. 2001. “Civic Engagement,” in: Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 217-232.

Presentation on:
Cecilie Gaziano. 1997. “Forecast 2000: Widening Knowledge Gaps,” Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 74 (2), 237-264.

Eszter Hargiatti [Blog] [@eszter] and Amanda Hinnant. 2008. “Digital Inequality: Differences in Young Adults’ Use of the Internet,” Communication Research 35 (5), 600-621.

The Selection of News and the Construction of Reality

Mandatory Reading:
Hans Mathias Kepplinger. 1989. “Theorien der Nachrichtenauswahl als Theorien der Realität,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B15, 3-16.

W. Lance Bennett. 1990. “Towards a Theory of Press-State Relations in the United States,” Journal of Communication 40 (2), 103-125.

Presentation on:
W. Lance Bennett, Victor W. Pickard, David P. Iozzi, Carl L. Schroeder, Taso Lago and C. Evans Caswell. 2004. “Managing the Public Sphere: Journalistic Constructions of the Great Globalization Debate,” Journal of Communication 54 (3), 437-455.

Harvey Molotch and Marily J. Lester. 1974. “News as Purposive Behavior: On the Strategic Use of Routine Events, Accidents, and Scandals,” American Sociological Review 39 (1), 101-112.

Mass Media and Politics

Mandatory Reading:
Winfried Schultz. 2004. “Reconstructing Mediatization as an Analytical Concept,” European Journal of Political Communication 19 (1), 87-102.

Michael J. Robinson. 1976. “Public Affairs Television and the Growth of Political Malaise: The Case of The Selling of the Pentagon,” American Political Science Review, 70, 409-43.

Presentation on:
Christina Holtz-Bacha. 1989. “Verleidet uns das Fernsehen die Politik? Auf den Spuren der Videomalaise,” in: Max Kaase and Winfried Schulz (eds.). Massenkommunikation. Theorien, Methoden, Befunde. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 239-252.

Joseph N. Capella. 2002. “Cynicism and Social Trust in the New Media Environment,” Journal of Communication 52 (1), 229-241.

Political Learning: Hard News vs Soft News

Mandatory Reading:
James Curran, Shanto Iyengar, Anker Brink Lund and Inka Salovaara-Moring. 2008. “Media System, Public Knowledge and Democracy: A Comparative Study,” European Journal of Communication 24 (1), 5-26.

Matthew A. Baum and Angela S. Jamison. 2006. “The Oprah Effect: How Soft News Helps Inattentive Citizens Vote Consistently,” Journal of Politics 68 (4), 946-959.

Presentation on:
Jody Baumgartner and Jonathan S. Morris. 2006. “The Daily Show Effect: Candidate Evaluations, Efficacy, and American Youth,” American Politics Research 34 (3), 341- 367.

W. Lance Bennett. 2005. “Beyond Pseudoevents: Election News as Reality TV,” American Behavioral Scientist 49 (3), 1-15.

Mass Media and and Campaigning
Mandatory Reading:
Klaus Schönbach and Edmund Lauf. 2002. “The Trap Effect of Television and its Competitors,” Communication Research 29 (5), 564-583.

Pippa Norris and David Sanders. 2003. “Message or Medium? Campaign Learning during the 2001 British General Election,” Political Communication 20 (3), 233-62.

Presentation on:
Ken Goldstein and Paul Freedman. 2002. “Lessons Learned: Campaign Advertising in the 2000 Elections,” Political Communication 19 (1), 5-28.

Jürgen Wilke and Carsten Reinemann. 2006. “Die Normalisierung des Sonderfalls? Die Wahlkampfberichterstattung der Presse 2005 im Langzeitvergleich,” in: Christina Holtz-Bacha (ed.). Die Massenmedien im Wahlkampf: Die Bundestagswahl 2005. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 306-337.

Political Communication Online
Mandatory Reading:
Sara Bentivegna. 2006. “Rethinking Politics in the Age of ICTs,” European Journal of Communication 21 (3), 331-344.

Birgit van Eimeren and Beate Frees. 2010. “Fast 50 Millionen Deutsche online – Multimedia für alle?” Media Perspektiven 7-8, 334-349.

Presentation on:
Matthew Hindman. 2005. “The Real Lessons of Howard Dean: Reflections on the First Digital Campaign,” Perspectives on Politics 3 (1), 121-128.

So guys, what’s missing?

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Twitter in Politics at CHI 2010 – The Presentation

Apr 13, ’10 3:09 PM

This sunday I participated in the workshop Microblogging: What and How Can We Learn Form It? at CHI 2010 in Atlanta, Georgia. During the workshop I presented my position paper Twitter in Politics: Lessons Learned during the German Superwahljahr 2009 in an ignite talk.

The workshop was organized by Julia H. Grace [@jewelia], Dejin Zhao [@djzaho] and danah boyd [@zephoria]. It was a great experience and very interesting to discuss the research challenges that microblogging poses with an international and highly interdisciplinary crowd of researchers. I‘ll post my thoughts on the workshop later this day. In this post I‘ll make my presentation and the rough draft of my talk available.

Since I tend to speak freely in presentations this draft might not be exactly what I said, still it should be pretty close. Anyhow this talk was meant as an appetizer to the position paper on the same topic. So, if you‘re looking for something to cite, kindly have a look at said position paper.

Twitter in Politics: Lessons Learned during the German Superwahljahr 2009

by Andreas Jungherr

Draft v.1.0
2010/04/13

In this ignite talk I want to take you on a short trip through my position paper Twitter in Politics: Lessons Learned during the German Superwahljahr 2009, so that by the end of this presentation, you‘ll have an idea on how and why the German party CDU used Twitter in the campaigns of 2009 like it did.

2009 was a special year for political campaigners in Germany. This had two reasons:

One was the relative high density of high-profile elections in this year. In 2009 there were elections in five important Bundesländern, elections to the European parliament, the election of the German Bundespräsident and in autumn, the German general election.This lead to the term Superwahljahr – the year of the super election.

The second reason was Barack Obama, or rather the things Obama did to win the US presidential election, or rather the things the media thought he was doing to win the election.

The German media was quick to identify the microblogging service Twitter as a key element to Obama‘s victory. And while one can find good reasons to disagree with their assessment, Twitter suddenly became the thing to do for up and coming politicians.

As anyone knows who worked with politicians, politicians tend to be like kids with regard to the adoption of knew technology. At first they want nothing to do with anything new, but when the cool kids are flashing a new toy there is nothing more important to them than to possess exactly THAT toy. This is exactly what happened with regard to Twitter in the German political scene from late 2008 onwards.

During 2008 most German politicians kept as far away from Twitter as humanly possible only to flock to the service in the aftermath of the press-storm about the online magic the Obama campaign managed to conjure up. In late 2008 and early 2009 many German politicians regardless of party and age found their inner Twitterer – or the inner Twitterer of a lucky staff member – and started a Twitter account.

This led to considerable concern in all parties since suddenly the campaigns had a social media component that was new to German campaigns. Fortunately the high frequency of campaigns in 2009 proved to be very fortunate for exactly this challenge. Campaigns on the state and European level could be used as prototypes for elements of social media campaigning. So by the time the national campaign went into its hot phase most German parties had had the chance to get acquainted with social media and incorporate it in some way in their grand strategy.

This proved to be a very interesting time to work for political campaigns in Germany. In early 2009 I entered the campaign to reelect the Ministerpräsident of Hessia, Roland Koch. During that campaign my work focused pretty much on the use of Twitter by our online campaign, the webcamp09. Later that year I entered the national campaign for the general elections. There I also worked on the use of Twitter by the campaign but I also worked on the approach the campaign took to social media in general.

This already hints at the way the CDU treated their campaigns in the Bundesländer. These campaigns were not isolated but were used as test cases and prototypes for the use of Twitter and social media in general. Two of the most valuable prototypes for the national campaign proved to be the online campaigns in the Bundesländern Hessia and Saarland. Both campaigns centered their online campaigns with their respective volunteer campaigns, the webcamp09 and the Peter Müller Team 09. Both campaigns used Twitter feeds under the names [@webcamp09] and [@pmt09]. The experiences with these accounts led the national campaign to start a Twitter feed [@teAMDeutschland]. And in turn the lessons learned during the campaign for the general elections in 2009 led to the way the campaign to reelect the Ministerpräsident Jürgen Rüttgers uses their Twitter account [@nrwruettgers] in early 2010, a campaign which I advise on their online activities.

So which were some of the lessons learned? Twitter proved a very important tool to do some classic community building. The Twitter feeds [@webcamp09] and [@teAMDeutschland] were both used to get online supporters in contact with each other and to react to their comments or critiques.

Twitter proved to be a very successful channel for the distribution of social objects (after Hugh MacLeod). Most of the time these social objects were not content designed by the campaign but content that was either created by supporters or party candidates who strayed from the official CI.

Twitter proved also to be a very useful backchannel to campaign events. It was possible for supporters and critics alike to follow and comment on campaign events, political TV shows or the debate between Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel and the SPD candidate Frank-Walter Steinmeier through Twitter. This proved to be valuable addition to classical campaign events.

Still, the experiences with Twitter during the campaign were not completely unproblematic. One of the biggest issues raised through the widespread adoption of Twitter was a sudden surge in negative campaigning. The content that was distributed the widest through Twitter was mostly negative in nature or contained attacks on the the political opponent. This was true for all political parties. This leads to fundamental questions about the political use of social media and how we can avoid that widespread political use of social media leads to a surge in negative campaigning.

So how are the Twitter efforts of these campaigns to be evaluated. Did they decide the election? Probably not. Personally I think the most important element in the political twittering of 2009 was the active learning process that it started in the party CDU. In the final account it is nor all that important which campaign did use Twitter the best or had the most followers. In the end it matters which political party is able after a campaign to clearly articulate lessons learned and to establish processes that guarantee perpetual learning and prototyping to ensure that said party keeps in contact with its online supporters and online critics.

This was a little appetizer to the content covered in the position paper. For a more detailed discussion of the issues raised in this presentation please have a look at the position paper itself.

Thank you.

Comments (1)

Twitter in Politics at CHI 2010

Apr 4, ’10 7:12 PM

Next Sunday I will participate in one of the workshops leading up to this year’s CHI 2010 in Atlanta, Georgia. The workshop is called Microblogging: What and How Can We Learn From It. It is organized by Julia H. Grace [@jewelia], Dejin Zhao [@djzhao] and danah boyd [@zephoria]. The position papers for the workshop are already online and promise an exiting day.

During the workshop I will present my position paper Twitter in Politics: Lessons learned during the German Superwahljahr 2009 in a short Ignite Talk. Although I have a narrative in mind which could fill the presentation I want to give the old unknown unknown a chance. Therefore I want to ask you which are the points you would be interested in hearing in an Ignite Talk about a paper called “Twitter in Politics: Lessons learned during the German Superwahljahr 2009?”

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Die CDU Onlinekampagne für die Landtagswahl 2010 in Nordrhein-Westfalen: Ein Zwischenstand

Mar 24, ’10 11:23 PM

Die CDU Onlinekampagne für die Landtagswahl 2010 in Nordrhein-Westfalen: Ein Zwischenstand

Eine Präsentation gehalten während des Politcamp 2010 in Berlin am 21. März 2010.

Während des Politcamp 2010 in Berlin präsentierte ich am 21. März den aktuellen Zwischenstand der CDU Onlinekampagne zur Landtagswahl in Nordrhein-Westfalen am 9. Mai 2010. Dies ist eine ausformulierte und leicht erweiterte Version meiner Präsentation.

Disclaimer: Ich berate die Onlinekampagne der CDU Nordrhein-Westfalen.

Nach den guten Erfahrungen mit Onlineunterstützerteams im Hessenwahlkampf wird auch in NRW der Großteil der Onlineaktivitäten von einem freiwilligen Unterstützerteam organisiert. Die Lektionen des hessischen webcamp09 sind die Basis für das NRW Onlineunterstützerteam NRW für Rüttgers.

Ausführlichere Informationen zum webcamp09 finden sich in dieser Präsentation die Alexander Kurz [@alexander_kurz] während des Politcamp 2009 hielt und in einem Report der Kampagnenpraxis.

Die Internetseite NRW für Rüttgers bildet das Rückgrat der Onlinekampagne. Hier werden unsere verschiedenen Kommunikationskanäle gebündelt.

Hier bloggen freiwillige Unterstützer zum Beispiel von Veranstaltungen,

oder stellen kampagnenbegleitende Materialien zur Verfügung.

Zusätzlich binden wir auf dieser Webseite Videos ein, die im Laufe der Kampagne erstellt wurden.

Eine Sammlung aller von uns für die Kampagne erstellten Videos finden sich im YouTube Kanal von NRW für Rüttgers.

Die dort gesammelten Videos sind fast ausschließlich von Freiwilligen produziert. Eine Ausnahme stellt die Vorstellung des Freiwilligen-Teams dar.

Bisher lassen sich die Videos überwiegend drei Themengruppen zuordnen. Die für deutsche Onlinekampagnen wahrscheinlich am innovativsten Videos sind regelmäßige direkte Videobotschaften des Generalsekretärs der CDU Nordrhein-Westfalens Andreas Krautscheid.

In diesen Videobotschaften stellte er sich seinen Unterstützern vor,

reagierte spontan auf tagesaktuelle Entwicklungen,

oder rief zu thematischen Aktionen auf.

Ein anderes viel genutztes Format ist die Vox Populi. In diesen von Freiwilligen konzipierten, gedrehten und geschnittenen Videos werden Menschen aus Nordrhein-Westfalen auf der Straße zu ihrer Meinung zu tagesaktuellen Themen gefragt.

Zusätzlich begleiten wir mit Videos klassische politische Veranstaltungen.

Zusätzlich zu diesem von dem Untersützerteam NRW für Rüttgers genutzten YouTube Kanal gibt es einen YouTube Kanal der CDU Nordrhein-Westfalen auf dem von CDU NRW-TV produzierte Videos präsentiert werden.

Wurde noch in der Kampagne zur Bundestagswahl 2009 von der CDU große Aufmerksamkeit auf die Erstellung und den Betrieb der teAM 2009 Online-Community gelegt, so werden viele dieser Funktionen in der Onlinekampagne zur Landtagswahl 2010 in Nordrhein-Westfalen durch die Nutzung von Facebook sicher gestellt.

Zentrum unserer Aktivitäten auf Facebook ist das von uns betriebene Facebook Fanprofil für Jürgen Rüttgers, das mit der Unterstützerseite NRW für Rüttgers verknüft ist.

Zusätzlich hierzu ist die CDU Nordrhein Westfalen auch mit einem weiteren Fanprofil auf Facebook vertreten:

Ein weiterer Unterschied zur Bundeskampagne liegt in unserer Nutzung der VZ-Netzwerke. Während die Bundeskampagne noch grosse Energie auf Aktionen um das Edelprofil der Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel verwendete, so betreiben wir zwar ein Edelprofil für Jürgen Rüttgers, fokusieren unsere Aktivitäten jedoch auf Facebook.

Zusätzlich hierzu nutzt die Kampagne auch Twitter mit dem Account @NRWRuettgers:

Auf diesem Account twittern die Unterstützer Ulrich Gelsen #ug [@gelsen], David J. Ludwigs #dl [@cronenbuerger] und Florian Braun #fb [@flobraun]. Um der Unpersönlichkeit eines Teamfeeds zu entgehen nutzen wir eindeutig zugewiesene Hashtags, so dass zu jeder Zeit nachvollziehbar ist welcher der Autoren gerade twittert.

Über den Twitter Account @NRWRuettgers twittert das Unterstützteam von Veranstaltungen,

von der täglichen Arbeit und antwortet auf Anfragen.

Generell ist uns die Interaktion um unsere Beiträge gleich auf welchem Kanal sehr wichtig. Auch wenn manchem die Zeit von dem posten eines Kommentars und seiner Freischaltung etwas zu lange dauert wir freuen uns über Kommentare und Aktivität um unsere Beiträge. Zeigt dies doch, dass wir mit unserem Angebot auf Interesse stossen und Debatten auslösen.

Die oben beschriebenen Elemente der Onlinekampagne sind für uns zur Zeit die wichtigsten Bausteine, auf die wir den Großteil unserer Aufmerksamkeit konzentrieren. Zusätzlich zu diesen Onlineangeboten findet die Kampagne aber auch auf anderen Onlinekanälen statt: Flickr, CDU Nordrhein-Westfalen, Jürgen Rüttgers und CDU NRW/Blog.

Für eine Diskussion weiterer Aspekte der Onlinekampagnen zur Landtagswahl 2010 in Nordrhein-Westfalen haben Oliver Zeisberger für die SPD und ich für die CDU im Westen ein Interview gegeben. Dieses Interview ist eine gute Ergänzung zu dieser Beschreibung unserer Kampagnenelementen.

[Update 2010/04/04]
Dieser Beitrag wurde inzwischen ebenfalls sowohl auf dem CDU NRW / Blog als auch auf dem Blog Homo Politicus veröffentlicht.

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Bits and pieces from last week 2009/50

Dec 13, ’09 12:02 AM

Drinking from the Firehose: Why Obama Should Stay the Hell Off Twitter

Colin Delany [@epolitics] gives an interesting perspective on the question whether leading politicians should use Twitter:

But I’d also argue that Twitter is fundamentally a bad match for a Chief Executive, for exactly the same reasons that so many other people are drawn to it. Like the rest of the social media universe, Twitter is effectively unfiltered, with a low wheat-to-chaff ratio even if you’re careful whom you follow. In many ways this is a strength, since part of the fun of the service is that you get access to so much information and opinion coming in from so many directions.

This argument focuses on the value of unfiltered vs filtered information for politicians:

While unfiltered information is valuable for bloggers, journalists and those of us with short attention spans, it’s not usually the best thing with which to fill your time when your actions have real-world consequences for, well, the entire world.

This argument does not address the elements of mediated intimacy, access or public conversations that are quite useful to politicians using Twitter. Still this argument is probably a reason for the social media “glass ceiling” which the Belgian blogger Clo Willaerts [@bnox] identified last month in her talk at the Personal Democracy Forum Europe. Her term describes the phenomenon that even social media savvy politicians stop using social media channels once they reach a certain level of responsibility.

Maybe Delany’s argument will give some pause to the All-Politicians-Online-All-The-Time Pundits.

An Internet Politics Index to David Plouffe’s The Audacity to Win

Colin Delany once again: In this post Delany gives a very useful index of passages that deal with the internet and politics in David Plouffe‘s account of the Obama campaign The Audacity to Win, a book that I’ll address in more detail later this month.

Tom Peters: Cool Friends Interview with Garrison Keillor

As a nice diversion from politics I’d suggest this interview with Garrison Keillor. In this piece he talks among other things about his writing and editing process:

[...] as you get older, you learn how to throw it out without much thought, without much pity. You look at a piece that you’ve written, and you take those first three paragraphs, and you dump them. You just rip them out. Usually, that’s the part that needs to be thrown out, the big windup, the big introduction. The first page almost always can go. You learn to do that without regret. I edit myself much more quickly and mercilessly now than I ever could have 20, 30 years ago.

Other topics are his show The Prairie Home Companion, the director Robert Altman, public speaking and the durability of sonnets.

If by any cruel twist of fate the name Garrison Keillor means nothing to you have a look at Garrison Keillor: The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes or listen to his News from Lake Wobegon.

From Cool Hunters to Chief Culture Officers: An Interview with Grant McCracken

While preparing a talk on the role of convergence in the online campaigns of various German parties in the run up to the German Bundestagswahl 2009 I turned once again to the work and blog of Henry Jenkins. There I stumbled on this great talk by Grant McCracken at the Futures of Entertainment 4 Conference. In this presentation McCracken introduces his concept of the Chief Culture Officer and its potential for companies:

Corporations have been notoriously bad at reckoning with culture. They manage the “problem of culture” with ad hocery of many kinds. They call on ad agencies, consultants, gurus and cool hunters and, when all else fails, the intern down the hall. But there is no single person and, worse, there is no senior manager. Even as culture grows ever more dynamic, various, demanding, and participatory. So that’s my argument: there ought to be someone in the C-Suite who’s job it is to reckon with culture and to spot the opportunities and dangers it represents.

McCracken’s book just made it on my to-read list.

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