David Taras – författare

Today, political leaders and candidates for office must campaign in a multimedia world through traditional forums—newspapers, radio, and television—as well as new digital media, particularly social media. Electoral Campaigns, Media, and the New World of Digital Politics chronicles how Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, email, and memes are used successfully and unsuccessfully to influence elections. Each of these platforms have different affordances and reach various audiences in different ways. Campaigns often have to wage different campaigns on each of these mediums. In some instances, they are crucial in altering coverage in the mainstream media. In others, digital media remains underutilized and undeveloped. As has always been the case in politics, outcomes that depend on economic and social conditions often dictate people’s readiness for certain messages. However, the method and content of those messages has changed with great consequences for the health and future of democracy. This book answers several questions: How do candidates/parties reach audiences that are preoccupied, inattentive, amorphous, and bombarded with so many other messages? How do they cope with the speed of media reporting in a continuous news cycle that demands instantaneous responses? How has media fragmentation altered the campaign styles and content of campaign communication, and general campaign discourse? Finally and most critically, what does this mean for how democracies function?

Today, political leaders and candidates for office must campaign in a multimedia world through traditional forums—newspapers, radio, and television—as well as new digital media, particularly social media. Electoral Campaigns, Media, and the New World of Digital Politics chronicles how Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, email, and memes are used successfully and unsuccessfully to influence elections. Each of these platforms have different affordances and reach various audiences in different ways. Campaigns often have to wage different campaigns on each of these mediums. In some instances, they are crucial in altering coverage in the mainstream media. In others, digital media remains underutilized and undeveloped. As has always been the case in politics, outcomes that depend on economic and social conditions often dictate people’s readiness for certain messages. However, the method and content of those messages has changed with great consequences for the health and future of democracy. This book answers several questions: How do candidates/parties reach audiences that are preoccupied, inattentive, amorphous, and bombarded with so many other messages? How do they cope with the speed of media reporting in a continuous news cycle that demands instantaneous responses? How has media fragmentation altered the campaign styles and content of campaign communication, and general campaign discourse? Finally and most critically, what does this mean for how democracies function?

This book is a cross-national analysis of the role of the internet in national electoral campaigns. It covers an array of electoral and party systems throughout the globe from parliamentary to presidential, party-based to candidate-oriented, multi-party to two-party, and stable party system to dynamic party system. It takes a look at three groups of nations with varying levels of Internet access—those where internet usage is common across demographic groups, those where usage has reached significant levels but not widespread penetration, and those where internet access is still limited to a small elite.Each chapter is a study of a particular nation, focusing on its electoral and party systems, the accessibility of the Internet to the population, the nature of candidate/party usage, and the effects of the internet on the conduct of campaigns. By reviewing the findings from these studies, Making a Difference draws conclusions about exactly how the internet influences electoral politics.

A key intermediary between courts and the public are the journalists who monitor the actions of justices and report their decisions, pronouncements, and proclivities. Justices and Journalists: The Global Perspective is the first volume of its kind - a comparative analysis of the relationship between supreme courts and the press who cover them. Understanding this relationship is critical in a digital media age when government transparency is increasingly demanded by the public and judicial actions are the subject of press and public scrutiny. Richard Davis and David Taras take a comparative look at how justices in countries around the world relate to the media, the interactive points between the courts and the press, the roles of television and the digital media, and the future of the relationship.

Power Shift? Political Leadership and Social Media examines how political leaders have adapted to the challenges of social media, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and memes, among other means of persuasion. Established political leaders now use social media to grab headlines, respond to opponents, fundraise, contact voters directly, and organize their election campaigns. Leaders of protest movements have used social media to organize and galvanize grassroots support and to popularize new narratives: narratives that challenge and sometimes overturn conventional thinking. Yet each social media platform provides different affordances and different attributes, and each is used differently by political leaders. In this book, leading international experts provide an unprecedented look at the role of social media in leadership today. Through a series of case studies dealing with topics ranging from Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump's use of Twitter, to Justin Trudeau's use of selfies and Instagram, to how feminist leaders mobilize against stereotypes and injustices, the authors argue that many leaders have found additional avenues to communicate with the public and use power. This raises the question of whether this is causing a power shift in the relationship between leaders and followers. Together the chapters in this book suggest new rules of engagement that leaders ignore at their peril. The lack of systematic theoretically informed and empirically supported analyses makes Power Shift? Political Leadership and Social Media an indispensable read for students and scholars wishing to gain new understanding on what social media means for leadership.

Power Shift? Political Leadership and Social Media examines how political leaders have adapted to the challenges of social media, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and memes, among other means of persuasion. Established political leaders now use social media to grab headlines, respond to opponents, fundraise, contact voters directly, and organize their election campaigns. Leaders of protest movements have used social media to organize and galvanize grassroots support and to popularize new narratives: narratives that challenge and sometimes overturn conventional thinking. Yet each social media platform provides different affordances and different attributes, and each is used differently by political leaders. In this book, leading international experts provide an unprecedented look at the role of social media in leadership today. Through a series of case studies dealing with topics ranging from Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump's use of Twitter, to Justin Trudeau's use of selfies and Instagram, to how feminist leaders mobilize against stereotypes and injustices, the authors argue that many leaders have found additional avenues to communicate with the public and use power. This raises the question of whether this is causing a power shift in the relationship between leaders and followers. Together the chapters in this book suggest new rules of engagement that leaders ignore at their peril. The lack of systematic theoretically informed and empirically supported analyses makes Power Shift? Political Leadership and Social Media an indispensable read for students and scholars wishing to gain new understanding on what social media means for leadership.

A key intermediary between courts and the public are the journalists who monitor the actions of justices and report their decisions, pronouncements, and proclivities. Justices and Journalists: The Global Perspective is the first volume of its kind - a comparative analysis of the relationship between supreme courts and the press who cover them. Understanding this relationship is critical in a digital media age when government transparency is increasingly demanded by the public and judicial actions are the subject of press and public scrutiny. Richard Davis and David Taras take a comparative look at how justices in countries around the world relate to the media, the interactive points between the courts and the press, the roles of television and the digital media, and the future of the relationship.

The Canadian media system, which in many respects is this society's "meeting ground"-its public square-is in the midst of a profound shift away from the foundations on which it has rested comfortably for decades. The publicly financed Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, long the backbone of the broadcasting system, is threatened by budget cuts and by technological change. The newspaper industry has fallen into the hands of a few powerful individuals. Huge global corporations and a vast communications revolution are dramatically altering the nature of news and entertainment. This book argues that unless action is taken these changes will narrow our access to the information we need as citizens and damage our capacity to communicate with each other and reflect on ourselves as a community. Power and Betrayal in the Canadian Media is a sweeping exploration of the Canadian media system and the impact it has on Canadian society, politics, and culture.

Digital Media has transformed the way Canadians socialize and interact, conduct business, experience culture, fight political battles, and acquire knowledge. Traditional media, including newspapers and conventional TV networks, remain the primary link to Canada's political sphere but are under concerted attack. YouTube, blogs, online broadcasting, Facebook, and Twitter have opened new and exciting avenues of expression but offer little of the same "nation-building glue" as traditional media. Consequently, Canada is experiencing a number of overlapping crises simultaneously: a crisis in news and journalism, threats to the survival of the media system as a whole, and a decline in citizen engagement. In Digital Mosaic, David Taras both embraces and challenges new media by arguing that these coinciding crises bring exciting opportunities as well as considerable dangers to democratic life and citizen engagement in Canada.

The End of the CBC? is about three overlapping crises: the crisis that has enveloped the CBC, the crisis of news, and the crisis of democracy. The emergence of platforms such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Netflix, the hyper-targeting of individual users through data analytics, the development of narrow online identity communities, and the rise of an attention economy have changed the media landscape in dramatic ways. Describing the failure of successive governments to address problems faced by the public broadcaster, this book explains how the CBC lost its place in sports, drama, and entertainment. Taras and Waddell propose a way forward for the CBC – one in which the corporation concentrates its resources on news and current affairs and re-establishes a reputation for depth and quality.

The End of the CBC? is about three overlapping crises: the crisis that has enveloped the CBC, the crisis of news, and the crisis of democracy. The emergence of platforms such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Netflix, the hyper-targeting of individual users through data analytics, the development of narrow online identity communities, and the rise of an attention economy have changed the media landscape in dramatic ways. Describing the failure of successive governments to address problems faced by the public broadcaster, this book explains how the CBC lost its place in sports, drama, and entertainment. Taras and Waddell propose a way forward for the CBC – one in which the corporation concentrates its resources on news and current affairs and re-establishes a reputation for depth and quality.

The follow-up to How Canadians Communicate, this second volume embarks upon a new examination of Canada's current media health and turns its attention to the impact of globalization on Canadian communication, culture, and identity. How Canadians Communicate II: Media, Globalization and Identity, includes contributions from experts from a wide range of specialties in the areas of communication and technology. Some, as the editors point out, are optimistic about the future of Canadian media, while others are pessimistic. All, however, recognize the profound impact of rapidly changing technologies and the new globalized world on Canadian culture. The contributors highlight the new tools such as blogs, Blackberries, and peer-to-peer networks that are continuously changing how Canadians communicate. And, they explore the various ways in which Canada is adapting to the new climate of globalization, suggesting new and innovative paths to further define and strengthen our uniquely Canadian cultural identity.

Fewer Canadians than ever are lacing up skates, swimming lengths atthe pool, practicing their curve ball, and experiencing the thrill ofcompetition. However, despite a decline in active participation,Canadians spend enormous amounts of time and money on sports, as fansand followers of sporting events and sports culture. Never has mediacoverage of sports been more exhaustive, and never has it been moredriven by commercial interests and the need to fuel consumerism, onwhich corporate profits depend. The power plays now occurring in thearena of sports are by no means solely a matter of money, however. Atissue as well in the media capture of sports are the values that informour daily lives, the physical and emotional health of the population,and the symbols so long central to a sense of Canadian identity.Writing from a variety of perspectives, the contributors to thiscollection set out to explore the impact of the media on our receptionof, and attitudes toward, sports—to unpack the meanings thatsports have for us as citizens and consumers. Well-known hockey writerRoy MacGregor delves into the influence of big media and big sports onthe practice of objective journalism; Richard Gruneau examines theworrisome relationship between sports participation and socioeconomicclass; blogger Derrick Newman investigates the impact of fantasyleagues on sports coverage; sociologist Harry Hiller looks at theiconic dimensions of the Vancouver Olympics. Other contributors shedlight on the way in which the media serve to transformsports—including, of course, hockey—into a vehicle for theexpression of identity and nationalism. Still others probe the functionof sports as spectacle: the escalation of violence, controversies overdrug use, and the media's coverage of tragic deaths. The goal isnot to score points but to prompt critical discussion of why sportsmatter in Canadian life and culture and how they contribute to theconstruction of Canadian identity.

In 2015, the New Democratic Party won an unprecedented victory in Alberta. Unseating the Progressive Conservatives-who had won every provincial election since 1971-they formed an NDP government for the first time in the history of the province.Orange Chinook is the first scholarly analysis of this election. It examines the legacy of the Progressive Conservative dynasty, the PC and NDP campaigns, polling, and online politics, providing context and setting the stage. It highlights the importance of Alberta's energy sector and how it relates to provincial politics with focus on the oil sands, the carbon tax, and pipelines.Examining the NDP in power, Orange Chinook draws on Indigenous, urban, and rural perspectives to explore the transition process and government finances and politics. It explores the governing style of premier Rachel Notley, paying special attention to her response to the 2016 For McMurray wildfire and to the role of women in politics.Orange Chinook brings together Alberta's top political watchers in this fascinating, multifaceted analysis.

In 2019, the United Conservative Party, under the leadership of Jason Kenney, unseated the New Democratic Party to form the provincial government of Alberta. A restoration of conservative power in a province that had seen the Progressive Conservatives win every election from 1971-2015, UCP quickly began to make political waves.This is the first scholarly analysis of the 2019 election and the first years of the UCP government, with special focus on the path of Jason Kenney's rise to, and fall from, provincial political power. It opens with an examination of the election from a number of vantage points, including the campaign, polling, and online politics. It provides fascinating insight into internal UCP politics with chapters on the divisions within the party, gender and the UCP, and the symbolism of Kenney's famous blue pickup truck. Explorations of oil and gas policy, the Energy War Room, Alberta's budgets, health care, education, the public sector, Alberta's cultural industries, and more provide unprecedented insight into the actions, motivations, and impacts of Kenney's UCP Government in power. Contributions from top political watchers, journalists, and academics provide a wide range of methods and perspectives.Concluding with a survey of the impacts of COVID-19 in Alberta and a comparison between Jason Kenney and Doug Ford, Blue Storm is essential reading for everyone interested in Alberta politics and the tumultuous first years of the UCP government. Providing key insights from perspectives across the political spectrum, this book is a captivating deep-dive into an unprecedented party, its often controversial politics, and its unforgettable leader.