Encyclopedia of Social Media and Politics

The Encyclopedia of Social Media and Politics is a three volume work from Sage that explores the rise of social media effects on politics in the United States and around the world. 

Edited by Kerric Harvey of George Washington University, the work carries over 600 essays that fall in general topic areas: Celebrities and Pioneers in Social Media; Congressional Social Media Usage, Measuring Social Media's Impact; Misuse of Social Media in the Political Arena; Social Media, Candidates and Campaigns; Social Media, Politics and Culture; Social Media and Networking Web Sites; Social Media and Political Unrest, Social Media and Social Activism; Social Media Concepts and Theories; Social Media Regulation, Public Policy and Actual Practice; and Social Media Types, Innovation and Technology.  

Volume III includes not only a good resource guide of related books, journals and websites but  a detailed appendix tracking social media usage by U.S. Senators and Congressmen--what platforms they use, and the number and frequency of their posts.

These volumes are a good place for beginners and more seasoned researchers to start their investigation of this rapidly transforming area of two interlocking fields, communication and political science.  Available in the Reference section of the Annenberg Library.

October CommQuote

This month's quote is from a New Yorker piece of this past summer on the rising neocon/nationalist movement among China's youth. The article profiles Tang Jie, a graduate student in Shanghai who made a 6-minute documentary that captures the nationalistic mood that has swept China since the Tibetan uprisings in March. The film has since widely circulated on You Tube.

"When people began rioting in Lhasa in March, Tang followed the news closely. As usual, he was receiving his information from American and European news sites, in addition to China's official media. Like others his age [he is 28], he has no hesitation about tunnelling under the government firewall, a vast infrastructure of digital filters and human censors which blocks politically objectionable content from reaching computers in China. Younger Chinese friends of mine regard the firewall as they would an officious lifeguard at a swimming pool - an occasional, largely irrelevant, intrusion.

To get around it, Tang detours through a proxy server - a digital way station overseas that connects a user with a blocked Web site. He watches television exclusively online, because he doesn't have a TV in his room. Tang also receives foreign news clips from Chinese students abroad....He's baffled that foreigners might imagine that people of his generation are somehow unwise to the distortions of censorship.

'Because we are in such a system, we are always asking ourselves whether we are brainwashed," he said. "We are always eager to get other information from different channels." Then he added, "But when you are in a so-called free system you never think about whether you are brainwashed.'"

--Evan Osnos, Letter From China: Angry Youth (The New Yorker, July 28, 2008)