Daniel Kreiss, “Prototype Politics: Technology-Intensive Campaigning and the Data of Democracy” (Oxford UP, 2016)

Daniel Kreiss is back on the podcast with his new book Prototype Politics: Technology-Intensive Campaigning and the Data of Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2016). Kreiss is associate professor in the School of Media and Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an affiliated fellow of the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.

Why did it take more than 20 people to write a tweet for the Romney campaign? Why did dozens of new companies emerge from recent Democratic campaigns? Prototype Politics argues that each party has adopted digital technologies in some very different ways and that these differences have had major consequences. Democrats and Republicans have had varied approaches to investing in technology and in technology expertise. Once the technology leaders, Republicans have lagged behind Democrats in recent cycles, investing smaller amounts of money overall and placing much less organization emphasis on digital strategy. It remains to be seen how these differences will shape the 2016 election, but Prototype Politics offers a fascinating account of the changing role of technology has moved to the center of campaign politics.