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The 2016 US election was ugly, divisive, maddening, and influential. In this provocative new book, Booth, Davisson, Hess, and Hinck explore the effect that everyday people had on the political process.

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The 2016 US election was ugly, divisive, maddening, and influential. In this provocative new book, Paul Booth, Amber Davisson, Aaron Hess, and Ashley Hinck explore the effect that everyday people had on the political process. From viewing candidates as celebrities, to finding fan communities within the political spectrum, to joining others online in spreading (mis)information, the true influence in 2016 was the online participant.

Poaching Politics brings together research and scholars from media studies, political communication, and rhetoric to provide an interdisciplinary perspective on the role of participatory cultures in shaping the 2016 US presidential election. Poaching Politics heralds a new way of creating and understanding shifts in the nature of political communication in the digital age.

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List of Illustrations - Acknowledgements - Affective Orientations and Digital Politics in a Networked Public Sphere - The Trump Card: Playing Fandom in the US 2016 Election - Fandom in Official Campaign Communication: Candidate Personae, Fan Voting Blocs, and Fan-Based Civic Arguments - Constituting the Deplorables - Memeing Our Way to Reality: Trolling as Rhetorical Orientation - Conclusion: What to Do When Politics Has Been Poached - Index.

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" Poaching Politics provides a timely and much-needed examination of the unique political moment in which we currently find ourselves. Drawing on extensive work within fan studies and participatory culture, the authors do an excellent job of explaining how our political discourse became dominated by talk of Deplorables, trolls, memes, and the ´alt-right.´ If you want to understand what online politics in the Trump era truly looks like, read this book."-Adrienne Massanari, University of Illinois at Chicago

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