Edited By: Axel Bruns, Gunn Enli, Anders Olof Larsson, Jessica Yarin Robinson, Tanja Bosch, Kateryna Kasianenko

We are excited to share that we have recently published the second edition of the Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics. The first edition of the Companion, published in 2016 (Bruns et al., 2016), arrived at a time of epochal change, even if few of our authors and editors were fully aware of it at the time. Similarly, the new edition captures a new critical point: generative AI and other emerging technologies may either accelerate the crises of disinformation, polarisation, and democratic decline, or open new spaces for civic innovation, regulation, and accountability. 

This updated and expanded volume brings together cutting-edge research across six continents to provide a comprehensive, global, up-to-date review of political uses of social media. In its 32 chapters, it covers the good, the bad, and the as-yet-uncertain of current developments in the uses of social media in political contexts, ten years on from the first book. It is organised into six sections: Concepts, Challenges, Policies, Problems, Platforms, and Possibilities, each featuring chapters by leading researchers in the field that address these themes from a wide variety of viewpoints. The politics of digital platforms remain unsettled, and this Companion provides a critical map of the present while pointing to the possibilities and futures that will define the next decade of social media and politics.

You can access the e-book version of the volume here: https://tinyurl.com/rcsmp2nded. The link includes direct access to the open-access chapters, and institutional or paid access where available. We encourage you to recommend the volume to your university library. 

If you enjoy podcasts, listen to two of our editors discuss the vision and the process behind the creation of the updated volume (via Pocket Cast or wherever you get your podcasts).