The Only Constant is Change

Abstract

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.

The Rally-Intensive Campaign: A Distinct Form of Electioneering in Sub-Saharan Africa and Beyond

“…Similarly, David Farrell and Paul Webb (2000) have advanced three “stages” of election campaign professionalization. In parallel, Jay Blumler and Dennis Kavanagh (1999) identify three “ages of political communication” and Ben Epstein (2018) enumerates four “political communication orders.” Typologies of political communication have broader scopes than typologies of election campaigns. Nonetheless, these typologies agree in numerous respects.…”

“…A burgeoning field has updated and complicated many of the characterizations of postmodern campaigns advanced by Norris and others (Chadwick 2013; Gibson et al 2004; Vaccari 2013). Many stress the contingent relationship between technology and campaign methods (Epstein 2018; Karlsen 2010; Vaccari 2013). Nonetheless, most of these authors locate their studies in what they describe variously as the third age, Internet politics, digital politics, electronic democracy, or hybrid media systems (Chadwick 2013; Gibson et al 2004; Vaccari 2013).…”

“…Nonetheless, most of these authors locate their studies in what they describe variously as the third age, Internet politics, digital politics, electronic democracy, or hybrid media systems (Chadwick 2013; Gibson et al 2004; Vaccari 2013). Further still, this periodization of historic campaigning has gone largely unchallenged by recent analytic histories of election campaign innovation (Epstein 2018; Strömbäck 2008).…”

“…In other ground campaigns, the rally is the primary means throughout which parties interact with voters directly. Therefore, in these campaigns, rallies form a significant part of parties’ perennial political communication goals: to multiply and target campaign contact (Epstein 2018: 7) for the purpose of persuading and mobilizing citizens (Nielsen 2012).…”

“…Histories of political communication are in part histories of technological progress. Accounts, which are too numerous to list comprehensively here, rehearse a well-worn story in which newspapers are joined by radio, limited-channel television, multiple-channel television, the Internet, and social media in turn (Dinkin 1989; Epstein 2018). Numerous authors have organized these successive innovations into “ages” or “orders” of political communication (Blumler and Kavanagh 1999; Epstein 2018).…”