The Citizen Marketer explores how everyday people circulate political media messages in the hopes of persuading peers and shaping the public mind. By examining the logics behind spreading political memes, hashtags, and more, Joel Penney charts the promises of citizen marketing for expanding democratic participation, as well as the risks that these practices pose for polarization, the trivialization of issues, and control and manipulation byelites.

• Acknowledgements


• Chapter 1: The Citizen Marketer Approach to Political Action


• Chapter 2: The Historical Lineage of the Citizen Marketer


• Chapter 3: Self-Labeled and Visible Identities


• Chapter 4: Political Fans and Cheerleaders


• Chapter 5: News Spreaders and Agenda-Setters


• Chapter 6: Towards a Critical Literacy of the Citizen Marketer Approach


• Methodological Appendix


• Notes


• References


• Index

Joel Penney is Assistant Professor at the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University.