front cover of Electoral Campaigns, Media, and the New World of Digital Politics
Electoral Campaigns, Media, and the New World of Digital Politics
David Taras and Richard Davis, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 2022

Today, political leaders and candidates for office must campaign in a multimedia world through traditional forums—newspapers, radio, and television—as well as new digital media, particularly social media. Electoral Campaigns, Media, and the New World of Digital Politics chronicles how Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, email, and memes are used successfully and unsuccessfully to influence elections. Each of these platforms have different affordances and reach various audiences in different ways. Campaigns often have to wage different campaigns on each of these mediums. In some instances, they are crucial in altering coverage in the mainstream media. In others, digital media remains underutilized and undeveloped. As has always been the case in politics, outcomes that depend on economic and social conditions often dictate people’s readiness for certain messages. However, the method and content of those messages has changed with great consequences for the health and future of democracy. 

This book answers several questions: How do candidates/parties reach audiences that are preoccupied, inattentive, amorphous, and bombarded with so many other messages? How do they cope with the speed of media reporting in a continuous news cycle that demands instantaneous responses? How has media fragmentation altered the campaign styles and content of campaign communication, and general campaign discourse? Finally and most critically, what does this mean for how democracies function?

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front cover of The Left and Digital Politics
The Left and Digital Politics
Political Parties from Platform Neoliberalism to Platform Socialism
Marco Guglielmo
University of Westminster Press, 2025
Digital platforms are more than devices, algorithms and websites. They organise societies through the leadership of platform capitalists and their allies in political institutions. We know that this leadership, or hegemony, fosters exploitation and inequalities. We also know that a politics of resistance is emerging among platform workers and communities around the digital commons.

Less known is how the left has been changing to have a say in digital politics. And what do left-wing parties think and do about platform societies? The Left and Digital Politics answers these questions by developing an updated Gramscian critical theory of (counter-)hegemony in platform societies and a comparative analysis of the ideologies and practices of key European left-wing parties.

The book provides a map of left-wing ideas and practices on digital politics, a compass to point out how some left-wing parties perform as barriers or allies of radical change, and an analytical toolkit to open new routes towards platform socialism.

“Transforming Gramsci’s project of the Modern Prince into a Digital Princess*+ may not happen overnight, but Guglielmo’s book provides great inspiration. It advances concepts in networked revolution and informs strategies for wars of position and movement for a socialist future. The author holds the left to account in its search for a better digital politics, by challenging us to unearth patterns of agency of the digital platform ‘subaltern’. I recommend The Left and Digital Politics whole-heartedly to all those fighting for digital justice, and beyond.”
– Professor Phoebe Moore, University of Essex

“This book sets a new standard for understanding the thorny relationship between the left and digital politics today. Combining innovative theory with detailed empirical studies, Guglielmo sets out to understand how left-wing political projects have made use of digital technologies, both practically and ideologically. In so doing, he sets out new pathways towards platform socialism in an era of neoliberal rule, exhaustively mapping out the contemporary terrain and lines of potential alliance and conflict.”
– Dr Alex Williams, University of East Anglia

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