Taking Our Country Back The Crafting of Networked Politics from Howard Dean to Barack Obama

"Politics and the Internet seem today to have been made for one another, as analyses, rebuttals, gaffes and innuendo fly across the web, feeding an insatiable demand for 'news.' In his vivid analysis of the Dean and Obama campaigns, Dan Kreiss reveals how political advocacy and social media were first harnessed and mobilized, as new media tools and field operations were yoked together in ways that ultimately transformed how candidates compete for office. This marriage of computation and empowerment makes for odd bedfellows, and its wide-ranging consequences for politics are deftly assessed in this rich study."--Walter W. Powell, Professor of Education and (by courtesy) Professor of Sociology, Stanford University "Online media excite and confuse political candidates and electorates. In Taking Our Country Back, Daniel Kreiss offers a sophisticated and engaging account of the place networked media occupy in politics. Kreiss combines empirical data with theoretically informed insights to tell the story of contemporary networked politics. This is pioneering work and an essential read for all interested in politics and public life." --Zizi Papacharissi, Professor of Communication, University of Illinois-Chicago The manner in which he balances his complicity with scholarly critique in [the] opening chapter sells the book as a work of skilled ethnography. I think it likely that Taking Our Country Back ... will become a core text in courses and discussions of 21st century political campaigning."--Josh Braun's blog"This is an important and detailed history of networked politics in the US. ...Highly Recommended."--CHOICE