Call for Manuscripts, Mass Communication and Society

Deadline: January 12, 2010

“The Facebook Election: New Media and the 2008 Presidential Campaign”
Special Symposium

Tom Johnson & Dave Perlmutter, Guest Editors

Some political observers dubbed the 2008 presidential campaign as the Facebook election. Barack Obama, in particular, employed Online Social-Interactive Media (OSIM) such as blogs, Twitter, Flickr, Digg, YouTube, MySpace and Facebook to run a grassroots style campaign. Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul similarly campaigned using OSIM technology in their organizing efforts. The Obama campaign was keenly aware that voters, particularly the young, are not simply consumers of information, but conduits of information as well. They often replaced the professional filter of traditional media with a social one. OSIMs allowed candidates to do electronically what previously had to be done through shoe leather and phone banks: contact volunteers and donors, and schedule and promote events.

OSIMs changed the way candidates campaigned, how the media covered the election and how voters received information. In this special issue of Mass Communication & Society, we seek theoretically driven and empirically grounded manuscripts on the role of OSIMs in the 2008 election campaign. In particular, we seek submissions that explore the subject in one or several of the following ways:

• Candidates’ use of OSIMs: How did presidential candidates use OSIMs as a tool to present their message, recruit volunteers and to raise money? What effect did the OSIMs have on the way they ran campaigns?
• Voters’ use of OSIMs: How did voters use OSIMS to get information on the 2008 campaign? How credible and useful did they judge political information from OSIMs? What effect did OSIMs have on their political attitudes, cognitions and behaviors?
• Traditional Media and OSIMs: How did legacy media and their online counterparts cover the OSIM phenomenon? How did they employ OSIMs in their election coverage?

This special issue of Mass Communication and Society will appear at the end of 2010. Submitted papers should follow the standard submission procedures outlined in the inside back cover of the journal. Authors should specify in their submission letter that they wish their submission to be considered for the 2008 Campaign New Media Symposium and must be received by January 12, 2010.