Communicator-in-Chief: How Barack Obama Used New Media Technology to Win the White House examines the fascinating and precedent-setting role new media technologies and the Internet played in the 2008 presidential campaign that allowed for the historic election of the nation's first African American president. It was the first presidential campaign in which the Internet, the electorate, and political campaign strategies for the White House successfully converged to propel a candidate to the highest elected office in the nation. The contributors to this volume masterfully demonstrate how the Internet is to President Barack Obama what television was to President John Kennedy, thus making Obama a truly twenty-first century communicator and politician. Furthermore, Communicator-in-Chief argues that Obama's 2008 campaign strategies established a model that all future campaigns must follow to achieve any measure of success. The Barack Obama campaign team astutely discovered how to communicate and motivate not only the general electorate but also the technology-addicted Millennial Generation - a generational voting block that will be a juggernaut in future elections.

John Allen Hendricks is the director of the division of communication and contemporary culture and professor of communication at Stephen F. Austin State University. Robert E. Denton, Jr. is the W. Thomas Rice Chair of Leadership Studies in the Pamplin College of Business and professor and department chair of communication at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.

Chapter 1: Political Campaigns and Communicating with the Electorate in the 21st Century
Chapter 2 : Gadgets, Gismos, and the Web 2.0 Election
Chapter 3 : RT @BarackObama We just made history: Twitter and the 2008 Presidential Election
Chapter 4 : Who Wants to Be My Friend? Obama, Youth, and Social Networks in the 2008 Campaign
Chapter 5 : My Fellow Blogging Americans: Weblogs and the Race for the White House
Chapter 6 : Obama and Obama Girl: YouTube, Viral Videos and the 2008 Presidential Campaign
Chapter 7: Email and Electoral Fortunes: Obama's Campaign Internet Insurgency
Chapter 8: Game ON: Video Games and Obama's race to the White House
Chapter 9: Political Campaigns in the 21st Century: Implications of New Media Technology