What Campaigns Become as Social Media Become the Infrastructure of Political Communication

Changing structures of communication become transformations of social institutions. That is a Deutschian point. 1 Others have also pointed out this connection, but Deutsch started with this observation in the early 1950s, and it was an important focus for his entire distinguished career. 2 His primary focus was on the development and reconstruction of nation-states. That is not the focus here. Our focus is on changing communication and the practice of elections—especially elections in the United States. Harry Truman campaigned in 1948 with a whistle-stop tour. Railroad was the infrastructure for reaching the people of the nation. The year 1950 was the first tentative step in what was to become the television age. The first campaign ad was broadcast in 1950 by William Benton, who was a candidate for the Senate in Connecticut. By 1952 both presidential campaigns were broadcasting political ads, and that has been much of the story of American elections since.