Drawing together empirical analyses of the use of social media by political movements and in national and regional elections and referenda, this book presents studies ranging from Anonymous and the Arab Spring to the Greek Aganaktismenoi, and from South Korean presidential elections to the Scottish independence referendum. .

Introduction PART I: THEORIES OF SOCIAL MEDIA AND POLITICS, Politics in the Age of Hybrid Media: Power, Systems, and Media Logics, Network Media Logic: Some Conceptual Considerations, Where There Is Social Media There Is Politics, Is Habermas on Twitter? Social Media and the Public Sphere, Third Space, Social Media and Everyday Political Talk, Tipping the Balance of Power: Social Media and the Transformation of Political Journalism, Agenda-Setting Revisited: Social Media in Mainstream Journalist, Trust Me, I Am Authentic!: Authenticity Illusions in Social Media Politics, How to Speak the Truth on Social Media: An Inquiry into Post-Dialectical Information Environments, PART II: POLITICAL MOVEMENTS, All Politics Is Local: Anonymous and the Steubenville/Maryville Rape Cases, Social Media Accounts of the Spanish Indignados, Every Crisis Is a Digital Opportunity: The Aganaktismenoi Movement’s Use of Social Media and the Emergence of Networked Solidarity in Greece, Social Media Use during Political Crises: The Case of the Gezi Protests in Turkey, Structures of Feeling, Storytelling, and Social Media: The Case of Egypt, The Importance of ‘Social’ in Social Media: The Lessons from Iran, Digital Knives Are Still Knives: The Affordances of Social Media for a Repressed Opposition against an Entrenched Authoritarian Regime in Azerbaijan, Social Media and Social Movements: Weak Publics, the Online Space, Spatial Relations and Collective Action in Singapore; Social Media and Civil Society Actions in India, Cyberactivism in China: Empowerment, Control, and Beyond, Voicing Discontent in South Korea: Origins and Channels of Online Civic Movements, Nationalist and Anti-Fascist Movements in Social Media, PART III: POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS, From Emerging to Established? A Comparison of Twitter Use during Swedish Election Campaigns in 2010 and 2014, Social Media in the UK Election Campaigns 2008-14: Experimentation, Innovation and Convergence, Compulsory Voting, Encouraged Tweeting? Australian Elections and Social Media, Not Just a Face(book) in the Crowd: Candidates’ Use of Facebook during the Danish 2011 Parliamentary Election Campaign, Social Media Incumbent Advantage: Barack Obama’s and Mitt Romney’s Tweets in the 2012 US Presidential Election Campaign, The 2012 French Presidential Campaign: First Steps into the Political Twittersphere, The Emergence of Social Media Politics in South Korea: The Case of the 2012 Presidential Election, Interactions between Different Language Communities on Twitter during the 2012 Presidential Election in Taiwan, Social Media Use in the German Election Campaign 2013, Comparing Facebook and Twitter during the 2013 General Election in Italy, Social Media and Election Campaigns in Sub-Saharan Africa: Insights from Cameroon, Social Media and Elections in Kenya, Electoral Politics on Social Media: The Israeli Case, Social Media and the Scottish Independence Referendum 2014: Events and the Generation of Enthusiasm for Yes, The Use of Twitter in the Danish EP Elections 2014, Twitter in Political Campaigns: The Brazilian 2014 Presidential Election

"Comprehensive and definitive, this is an outstanding book that provides a panoramic view of politics in an era of social media. From the Mediterranean to East Asia to Oceania, from Scandinavia to sub-Sahara Africa to Latin America, the volume as a whole is truly global, yet with nuanced regional and national analyses in each chapter. Theoretically informed, the research presented here breaks new empirical grounds using latest digital methods. The result is a milestone for our collective understanding of new media technology and comparative politics in the twenty-first century." —Jack Linchuan Qiu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong"This book brings together top scholars from across disciplines and across the globe to examine social media use in a variety of political systems and for distinct purposes. It is required reading for anyone interested in understanding the many ways that digital communication technologies now are used in political life." —Jennifer Stromer-Galley, Syracuse University"The strength of this collection is in its diversity of international and theoretical perspectives, which make it a valuable resource providing a contemporary overview of this quickly expanding area of political communication research." -Caroline Fisher, Australian Journalism Review