CHANGING AND STAYING THE SAME: COMMUNICATION IN CAMPAIGN 2008

Abstract

In 2004 Journalism Studies commissioned a number of senior journalists to reflect on their experiences of reporting the Presidential election and to draft ‘Front Line’ reports documenting continuities and changes in media coverage and shifts in campaign communication strategies, as well as developments in new media technologies, especially the Internet and their impact on political communications. In 2008, we again invited distinguished journalists and public relations specialists to offer brief, but first hand, accounts of their experiences in reporting this landmark election. Walter R. Mears reports on newspaper coverage of the campaign, Debora Halpern Wenger and Susan A. MacManus offer an account of television coverage of an “election ‘season’ like no other”, Josh Kraushaar provides an insider account of the presidential election in which the Internet “became a crucial cog in how voters get their political news”, while Merrie Spaeth analyses aspects of Presidential politics and public relations. Distinguished communication scholar Lynda Lee Kaid introduces these reports from the front line with an essay which identifies “some campaign mainstays” such as the continued focus on the horserace elements of the campaign, which “remained significant elements of the 2008 contest”, but also highlights developments in new technologies which nurtured “unprecedented advances in candidate strategies and tactics and in news media coverage of the campaign.”