It looks like 2016 is destined to start with a bang rather than a whimper: I’m delighted to announce that a major collection I’ve edited with my colleagues Gunn Enli, Eli Skogerbø, Anders Olof Larsson, and Christian Christensen in Oslo and Stockholm has now been published. The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics is a 37-chapter, 560-page collection of current research on the uses of social media in political activism and electoral campaigning.
From Anonymous to the Scottish Independence Referendum, from oppositional politics in Azerbaijan to elections in Kenya, the Companion covers a broad range of social media uses and impacts. It combines this with a number of keystone chapters that review and update existing political communication theory for a social media context. My sincere thanks to our many contributors, my co-editors, and especially our hard-working editorial coordinator Nicki Hall for making this publication happen – hope you enjoy it!
I’m sharing our introduction to the volume here:
Axel Bruns, Gunn Enli, Eli Skogerbø, Anders Olof Larsson, and Christian Christensen. “Introduction.” The Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics, eds. Axel Bruns, Gunn Enli, Eli Skogerbø, Anders Olof Larsson, and Christian Christensen. New York: Routledge, 2016. 1-3.