Power Shift? Political Leadership and Social Media examines how political leaders have adapted to the challenges of social media, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and memes, among other means of persuasion. Established political leaders now use social media to grab headlines, respond to opponents, fundraise, contact voters directly, and organize their election campaigns. Leaders of protest movements have used social media to organize and galvanize grassroots support and to popularize new narratives: narratives that challenge and sometimes overturn conventional thinking. Yet each social media platform provides different affordances and different attributes, and each is used differently by political leaders.
In this book, leading international experts provide an unprecedented look at the role of social media in leadership today. Through a series of case studies dealing with topics ranging from Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump's use of Twitter, to Justin Trudeau's use of selfies and Instagram, to how feminist leaders mobilize against stereotypes and injustices, the authors argue that many leaders have found additional avenues to communicate with the public and use power. This raises the question of whether this is causing a power shift in the relationship between leaders and followers. Together the chapters in this book suggest new rules of engagement that leaders ignore at their peril.
The lack of systematic theoretically informed and empirically supported analyses makes Power Shift? Political Leadership and Social Media an indispensable read for students and scholars wishing to gain new understanding on what social media means for leadership.
Richard Davis is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Office of Civic Engagement at Brigham Young University, USA. He is the author of several books on the Internet and American politics including Twitter and Elections Around the World: Campaigning in 140 Characters or Less (2016), Covering the Courts in the Digital Age (2014), The Symbiotic Relationship Between the U.S. Supreme Court and the Press (2014), and may more.
David Taras is Professor of Communication Studies and holds the Ralph Klein Chair in Media Studies at Mount Royal University, Canada. Before coming to Mount Royal, David taught at the University of Toronto, the University of Amsterdam and, most recently, the University of Calgary, where he served as the Ernest C. Manning Chair in Canadian Studies. While there, he received the Students' Union Award for Teaching Excellence five times and was inducted into the Teaching Excellence Awards Hall of Fame in 2011. He was President of the Canadian Communications Association and served two terms on the Board of Governors of the University of Calgary. He received the Alberta Centennial Medal in 2005. A leading expert in the area of Canadian media policy and its relationship to Canadian identity and democracy, he is the author of The Newsmakers: The Media's Influence on Canadian Politics (1990) and of Power & Betrayal in the Canadian Media (2001). He is co-author of The Last Word: Media Coverage of the Supreme Court of Canada (2006).
