Jody C. Baumgartner and Terri L. Towner (Eds.), The Internet and the 2016 Presidential Campaign

Abstract

The influence of the Internet in the election is also a controversial and complicated issue, as editors Jody C. Baumgartner and Terri L. Towner argue in the preface. The traditional media werethe most common source of election news in both 2008 (77%) and 2016 (78%). However, in 2016, Americans learned “more about elections from online sources (65%)” (p. xvii) than in the past. If the use of traditional media has not changed dramatically over time, why did people inform themselves so significantly by using new media? Does the Internet set the agenda for traditional media, campaigns, or candidates? Or vice versa? This book strives to answer these questions. Although the coveris not eye-catching, itpresents the icons of social networks, the book’s content deals with remarkable issues like gender, balance of power, and agenda building on Twitter and Instagram in presidential and congressional elections as well as gubernatorial elections in 2016. The authors of the book’s chapters applied mostly quantitative methods (surveys, content analysis of social media posts, electronic data collection).