Abstract

A number of interrelated developments have transformed election campaigns and, taken together, have ushered in a new, fourth, era in political communication. Advancing technology and the new uses to which it is put in campaigns and elections is a key feature of this fourth era, which can be distinguished from the influential three-era framework of political communication of the late 1990s and early 2000s (Farrell, 1996; Farrell and Webb, 2000; Norris, 2000; Schmitt-Beck and Farrell, 2002). The fourth era began to take shape with the rapid growth of social media from the mid-2000s.