BOOK REVIEW: Person-to-Person-to-Person: Harnessing the Political Power of Online Social Networks and User Generated Content

We're up to another one of those fantastic IPDI reports on today's book review, a treat for you and I alike. Today's covers topics that I have become intimately familiar with over the course of the past academic year: social networks and user-generated content. While there's no question that these areas are having a definite impact on the world of political campaigns, this report examines exactly how campaign managers can replicate and profit from an essentially organic political process.

The report is amazingly comprehensive, running the gamut from digital effects on traditional media forms (Chuck DeFeo's chapter on talk radio's transition into the blogging community) to encouraging offline contacts and action once online communities are established (Brad Fey's chapter on the shifting nature of word-of-mouth advertising). All of these chapters are presented in plain-speaking, easy-to-implement forms, which seems to fit IPDI's commitment to producing applicable handbooks rather than starry-eyed book of theory.

Personally, my favorite chapter covered the use of video games as a persuasive political tool. The chapter mainly focuses on the concept of adver-gaming, or the use of video games as a medium for message presentation and reinforcement. This approach mirrors game studies specialist Ian Bogost's concept of procedural rhetoric, a topic that I'm keen to explore as part of my thesis research next year. Bogost's argument that games persuade by "running processes and executing rule-based symbolic manipulation" lends itself well to the inclusion of nuanced, persuasive content within the video game system. The fact that the political half of the industry is picking up on the concept is heartening, and suggests that further exploration is necessary.