This study seeks to understand the efficacy of online political campaign communication.We do this by measuring the changes in online influence of political candidates by utilizing Klout, a new, publicly available measure incorporating a variety of behaviors online. We collected daily Klout data of nearly all major congressional and presidential campaigns during the 2012 election cycle and compare them to other traditional measures of online influence and campaign success. We conclude that Klout offers valuable advantages as a sophisticated research tool for evaluating real-time online influence of political campaigns, but caution researchers about some limitations in its use.Political communication is, above all else, an effort by political elites to connect with and inform the public in order to motivate political activity. In other words, political communication aims to influence people in order to gain support or mobilize political activity. For campaigns, communication influence is generally measured in retrospect by counting votes on Election Day. However, campaigns, and those who follow them closely, constantly strive to evaluate how effective their communication is in real time in order to maximize influence given limited resources. In the current era of online political communication, successful messaging is not merely broadcast to the masses;

Technological innovations offer opportunities for governments to connect with citizens and improve service provision efficiency and effectiveness, but why do some governments adopt these innovations while others do not? Using a mixed methodological approach, including interviews with city officials and multivariate analysis of a novel data set of municipal e-government service offerings, we examine what factors motivate or impede city officials from innovating. Overall, we find that cities with the council–manager form of government, with larger populations, and with more financial resources adopt more e-government services. Specifically, as total revenue per capita increases, cities are more likely to adopt payment-based services and informational services. Increased spending on central staff is associated with higher rates of adoption of interactive services and social media. The results suggest that council–manager governments are more innovative and that local governments consider both the up-front costs and the need for ongoing staff associated with particular innovations.

The Only Constant Is Change presents and tests the political communication cycle (PCC), a model describing how political actors and organizations make decisions about if, how, and when to innovate their political communication practices. Generally speaking, political communication goals have remained largely stable over time, but the strategies used to accomplish these goals have changed a great deal. The PCC describes the recurring process of political communication innovation through American political history. This model incorporates the technological, political, and behavioral factors influencing how and when changes in political communication activity take place. The PCC is made up of three phases that also serve as an organizational structure for the book. First is the technological imperative, which focuses on how new information and communications technologies (ICT) are developed and what types of ICTs may be more or less likely to be used to innovate political communication. Next, the political choice phase incorporates the behavioral processes embedded in how different types of actors choose whether to innovate or not. This phase is the most critical and is analyzed through case studies evaluating how campaigns, social movements, and interest groups have or have not changed their political communication activities over time. Finally, the stabilization phase encompasses the process of how once innovative techniques become the new status quo though the establishment of new norms, regulations, and institutions. The book explores these changes through historical and contemporary analysis, which offers important context and tools to understand political communication through history and today.

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Citizens often attempt to interact with government through online modes of communication such as email and social media. Using an audit study, we examine when and how American municipalities with populations of over 50,000 respond to online requests for information. We develop baselines for municipal responsiveness, including the average rate, time, and quality of responses, and examine whether these response attributes vary based on the mode of communication or the tone of the request. Overall, municipalities responded to 54% of email requests and 38% of Twitter requests. A majority of responses were received on the same business day. Responses are slightly faster on Twitter, but of higher quality on email. Governments are more likely to respond to frustrated constituents on email, but respond faster to frustrated queries on Twitter, though with lower quality responses. These findings contribute to our understanding of local government responsiveness and have significant implications for democratic accountability and resident compliance with and the effectiveness of local government policies. Furthermore, our scholarly understanding of local government communications with residents, and particularly the promise of social media as a tool of two-way communication, may be underdeveloped.