The Citizen Marketer

The Citizen Marketer The Citizen Marketer explores how everyday people circulate political media messages in the hopes of persuading peers and shaping the public mind. By examining the logics behind spreading political memes, hashtags, and more, Joel Penney charts the promises of citizen marketing for expanding democratic participation, as well as the risks that these practices pose for polarization, the trivialization of issues, and control and manipulation by elites. From hashtag activism to the flood of political memes on social media, the landscape of political communication is being transformed by the grassroots circulation of opinion on digital platforms and beyond. By exploring how everyday people assist in the promotion of political media messages to persuade their peers and shape the public mind, Joel Penney offers a new framework for understanding the phenomenon of viral political communication: the citizen marketer. Like the citizen consumer, the citizen marketer is guided by the logics of marketing practice, but, rather than being passive, actively circulates persuasive media to advance political interests. Such practices include using protest symbols in social media profile pictures, strategically tweeting links to news articles to raise awareness about select issues, sharing politically-charged internet memes and viral videos, and displaying mass-produced T-shirts, buttons, and bumper stickers that promote a favored electoral candidate or cause. Citizens view their participation in such activities not only in terms of how it may shape or influence outcomes, but as a statement of their own identity. As the book argues, these practices signal an important shift in how political participation is conceptualized and performed in advanced capitalist democratic societies, as they casually inject political ideas into the everyday spaces and places of popular culture. While marketing is considered a dirty word in certain critical circles -- particularly among segments of the left t Autor: Joel (Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Penney Wydawnictwo: Oxford University Press Rok wydania: 2017 Okładka: twarda Liczba stron: 262 Wymiary: 16 x 23.9 x 1.8 cm Język: angielski ISBN: 9780190658052