This book examines the way social media changed how candidates campaigned in the 2008 US presidential election, how the media covered the election and how voters received information.

It was originally published as a special issue of Mass Communication & Society.

Thomas J. Johnson is the Amon G. Carter, Jr. Centennial Professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, USA. He has studied the role of new media in the presidential election since 1992 and has authored more than 50 articles and book chapters, primarily in the area of political communication. Previous publications include International Media Communication in a Global Age (2009).

David D. Perlmutter is Director of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and a Professor and Starch Faculty Fellow at The University of Iowa, USA. He is the author or editor of seven books on political communication including Blogwars: The New Political Battleground (2008). He has also written several dozen research articles for academic journals as well as more than 200 essays for US and international newspapers and magazines.

1. Introduction: The Facebook Election Thomas J. Johnson and David D. Perlmutter 2. Intermedia Agenda-Setting and Political Activism:MoveOn.org and the 2008 Presidential Election Matthew Ragas and Spiro Kiousis 3. The 2008 Presidential Campaign: Political Cynicism in the age of Facebook, MySpace and YouTube Gary Hanson and Paul Haridakis 4. Did Social Media Really Matter? College Students' Use of Online Media and Political Decision Making in the 2008 Election Matthew Kushin and Masahiro Yamamoto 5. The 2008 Presidential Election, 2.0: A Content Analysis of User-Generated Political Facebook Groups Julia Woolley, Anthony Limperos and Mary Oliver 6. The Writing on the Wall: A Content Analysis of College Students' Facebook Groups for the 2008 Presidential Election Juliana Fernandes, Magda Giurcanu, Kevin Bowers and Jeffrey Neely