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The Social Media President: Barack Obama and the Politics of Digital Engagement. By James E. Katz, Michael Barris, and Anshul Jain. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. 215 pp.
The Social Media President takes readers on a technological journey into President Barack Obama's administration. While the book treads briefly into Obama's presidential campaign, the authors primarily use case studies to investigate his administration's use of social media outside of the elections. The authors question whether the administration has successfully used social media tools to give the public influence over policy as well as whether those tools have enhanced participatory democracy. Throughout the book, they utilize interviews with key people involved with the social media campaigns. Ultimately, the book arrives at the conclusion that, while Obama might have used the tools to solicit public input, they have given the public little, if any, influence over policy as a whole.
The authors select key social media case studies for their critique. They generally examine cases that are relevant to the presidency or to White House operations. This criterion means that social media that are relevant to the government as a whole are left out of the book. Several of the president's social media...