The Citizen Marketer

Beschreibung

"This book looks at the phenomenon of the citizen marketer. The citizen marketer is guided by the logics of marketing practice, but, rather than being passive, actively circulates persuasive media to advance political interests. Such practices include using protest symbols in social media profiles, tweeting links to news articles to raise awareness about issues, sharing politically-charged internet memes, and displaying merchandise that promotes a favored electoral candidate or cause. These practices signal an important shift in how political participation is conceptualized and performed in advanced capitalist democratic societies, as they inject political ideas into popular culture. The book argues that citizens view such activities with regard to how they may shape or influence outcomes, and as statements of personal identity. Marketing is a dirty word in certain critical circles, particularly among segments of the left that have identified neoliberal market logics as a focus of political struggle. At the same time, some of these critics have pushed back against the forces of neoliberal capitalism by co-opting its marketing and advertising techniques to spread counter-hegemonic ideas to the public. Accordingly, this book argues that the citizen marketer approach is a means of promoting a wide range of political ideas, including those that are broadly critical of elite uses of marketing in capitalist societies. The book includes an extensive historical treatment of citizen-level political promotion in modern democratic societies, connecting contemporary digital practices to both the 19th century tradition of mass political spectacle as well as more informal, culturally-situated forms of political expression that emerge from postwar countercultures"-- (Quelle: Google Books API)