The Citizen Marketer

Promoting Political Opinion in the Social Media Age

Joel Penney

Oxford Studies in Digital Politics

Offers a humanized and accessible account of digital activism through first-hand testimony from everyday citizens.
The first volume to explore the relationship between pre-digital participatory media practices and contemporary digital culture.
Advances a controversial thesis and a new theoretical concept - the citizen marketer.
Examines the tensions and challenges that accompany many forms of media-based activism.
Touches on relevant topics, including the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign and the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Citizen Marketer

Promoting Political Opinion in the Social Media Age

Joel Penney

Oxford Studies in Digital Politics

Description

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 that have identified neoliberal market logics and consumer capitalist structures as a major focus of political struggle -- some of these very critics have determined that the most effective way to push back against the forces of neoliberal capitalism is to co-opt its own marketing and advertising techniques to spread counter-hegemonic ideas to the public. Accordingly, this book argues that the citizen marketer approach to political action is much broader than any one ideological constituency or bloc. Rather, it is a means of promoting a wide range of political ideas, including those that are broadly critical of elite uses of marketing in consumer capitalist societies. The book includes an extensive historical treatment of citizen-level political promotion in modern democratic societies, connecting contemporary digital practices to both the 19th century tradition of mass political spectacle as well as more informal, culturally-situated forms of political expression that emerge from postwar countercultures. By investigating the logics and motivations behind the citizen marketer approach, as well as how it has developed in response to key social, cultural, and technological changes, Penney charts the evolution of activism in an age of mediatized politics, promotional culture, and viral circulation.

The Citizen Marketer

Promoting Political Opinion in the Social Media Age

Joel Penney

Oxford Studies in Digital Politics

Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: The Citizen Marketer Approach to Political Action
Chapter 2: The Historical Lineage of the Citizen Marketer
Chapter 3: Self-Labeled and Visible Identities
Chapter 4: Political Fans and Cheerleaders
Chapter 5: News Spreaders and Agenda-Setters
Chapter 6: Towards a Critical Literacy of the Citizen Marketer Approach
Methodological Appendix
Notes
References
Index

The Citizen Marketer

Promoting Political Opinion in the Social Media Age

Joel Penney

Oxford Studies in Digital Politics

Author Information

Joel Penney is Assistant Professor at the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University.

The Citizen Marketer

Promoting Political Opinion in the Social Media Age

Joel Penney

Oxford Studies in Digital Politics

Reviews and Awards

"Penney's citizen marketer approach equips scholars with tools for theory building that can inform both qualitative and quantitative research designs. As such, the book is a must-read for scholars of political communication, journalism, and social media research. Additionally, Penney's arguments hold relevance for practitioners of political and advocacy campaigns, who can use the book's lessons to conduct their digital marketing efforts in a democratically-responsible manner." -- Michael Bossetta, Journal of Communication

"Solid scholarship. Recommended." - CHOICE

"This is a must-read book for anyone looking to understand the ways that citizens are taking up the marketing of political candidates and causes in the social media era." - Daniel Kreiss, Author of Prototype Politics: Technology-Intensive Campaigning and the Data of Democracy

"The Citizen Marketer helps us dig into real campaigns and real campaigners whose work sometimes proceeds in the spirit of democracy, and sometimes degrades democracy. Understanding modern political communication means getting to know the varied forms of computational propaganda that we all produce and consume." - Philip Howard, Author of Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up

"Joel Penney provides a compelling, nuanced, and rich exploration of how marketing logic and civic self-expression are morphing and combining in the digital age. It is an essential book for all interested in politics, marketing, and public life." -David Karpf, Author of The MoveOn Effect and Analytic Activism

2018 APSA Information, Technology and Politics Section Best Book Award

2018 Roderick P. Hart Outstanding Book Award from the Political Communication Division of NCA

The Citizen Marketer

Promoting Political Opinion in the Social Media Age

Joel Penney

Oxford Studies in Digital Politics

From Our Blog

The long history of political social media

One of the key stories of the last US presidential election was the battle of words and images fought by supporters of the candidates on social media, or what one journalist has called 'The Great Meme War' of 2016. From hashtag slogans like #FeelTheBern and #MakeAmericaGreatAgain to jokey internet memes like 'Nasty Women', public participation in political advocacy and promotion has reached a fever pitch in the age of networked digital technologies.

Posted on June 27, 2017

Read the blog post