How is political communication changing in these highly charged, tech-intensive times?  The SC&I Social Media and Society Cluster has invited political communication expert Prof. Daniel Kreiss to SC&I to discuss the role of technology and social media on modern media institutions, journalism, politics, and, of course, governance, on March 6, 1:00pm, in the fourth floor Scholarly Communication Teleconference Room in Alexander Library.
 
Daniel Kreiss is Associate Professor and Director of the Ph.D. Program in the School of Media and Journalism, affiliated with the Department of Communication Studies, at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He is the author of the 2016 book Prototype Politics: Technology-Intensive Campaigning and the Data of Democracy (Oxford University Press) and 2012’s Taking Our Country Back: The Crafting of Networked Politics from Howard Dean to Barack Obama (also with Oxford). His talk will be titled:
 
 “Technology-intensive Governance: What Social Media and Electoral Politics Tell Us About the Nature of Contemporary Political Communication, Parties, and Policy-making”
 
Abstract: Contemporary electoral politics is now ‘technology-intensive,’ which means that everything campaigns do has an underlying technological component, from the databases they use to identify voters to the social media platforms they target them on. This has had some surprising implications for the people who practice politics, the expertise and skills required, the new intermediaries that shape flows of political communication, and the new dynamics of public engagement and attention. In this talk, I extend my research on the new dynamics of electoral politics to governance, considering how changes in technology shape policymaking, from the ways that elected officials communicate with the public, journalists, and each other, to the workings of political and media institutions. Please join the Social Media and Society Cluster as we welcome Daniel Kreiss on March 6 for this very timely talk. For more information, contact Prof. Mary Chayko at mary.chayko at rutgers.edu.