Page 19 - An Introduction to Political Communication Fifth Edition

Intro to Politics Communication (5th edn)-p.qxp 9/2/11 10:55 Page xviii

PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION
democratic societies in general. Most important of these is the full flowering
of the internet as a political communication tool for all self-respecting
political actors, in or out of government.
When the first edition of this book was published in 1995 the internet was
not a meaningful part of the political communication environment. By the
fourth edition in 2007 online technology had evolved and disseminated
sufficiently to play a significant role in the 2004 US presidential election. In
most other democratic countries the campaigning and networking properties
of online media were still relatively undeveloped, but political actors were
learning quickly.
Political journalists, too, were increasingly visible online as bloggers. My
fourth edition referred to what a 2005 Guardian feature article described as
a ‘new commentariat’ of political bloggers, who were said to be supplanting
the print pundits who had hitherto dominated political commentary in most
democratic societies.
By 2010 the use of the internet, and social networking tools in particular,
had become standard communication practice for political actors. In the
United States online campaigning and fundraising were widely seen as key
in Barack Obama’s successful presidential run in 2008. The British govern-
ment and its myriad agencies such as media regulator Ofcom used Twitter
extensively to communicate internally, with one official producing a much-
read manual on how to use the social networking platform.
By 2010 Twitter and Facebook were also being routinely used to
communicate with electorates and stakeholders. The internet was by then
also used to publish detailed and exhaustive official information on events
such as public inquiries and judicial reviews. The passing of Freedom of
Information legislation under New Labour encouraged this trend in the UK,
but there was a global movement towards openness and transparency in
government. A dwindling number of authoritarian regimes resisted, of
course, and not all democratic governments were good at learning the rules
of information management in the globalised, digitised environment of 2010.
It was a reality no government or state apparatus could ignore, however.
Increasingly, this openness was imposed on governments whether they
liked it or not, as in the activities of the Wikileaks site, which published
classified US military and other documents to the world without permission,
and often despite the objection and acute embarrassment of official sources.
When Israeli soldiers killed nine people in their determination to stop the
‘peace flotilla’ of May 2010, footage of the incident was relayed through
Twitter and other platforms to publics all over the world. Social networking
tools were used extensively in the pro-reform post-election demonstrations
in Iran in June 2009.
As Wikileaks and the capacity of Twitter to bypass governmental cen-
sorship has demonstrated with increasing frequency in recent times, the new
online communication tools are proving to be of value not just to politicians

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