ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how political practitioners – strategists, pollsters, campaign directors, and communications advisors – are responding to the new media environment and how this environment affects the ways in which media campaigns are fought. Media have come a long way since the days of “radio and the printed page” described by Paul Lazarsfeld in 1940. The fields of media and also politics are undergoing a period of immense change, fragmentation, and diversification. The impact of social media on politics is being perpetually re-evaluated by both scholars and practitioners. The difference in the way political communication is conducted in the digital age is, as one political practitioner described it, “still the new and developing issue” for campaigns. Several political practitioners across all parties identified paid advertising on Facebook and YouTube as becoming more utilised, especially with geo-targeted ads focusing on local candidates and, to a lesser extent, issues.
