This book contributes to debates concerning online reporting of elections and the challenges facing journalism in the context of democratic change. The speed of technological adaptation by journalists and their audiences means online news is gradually becoming a normalised part of media landscapes across the world. Journalists monitor social media for insight into the political process and as an instant indication of "public sentiment", rather than waiting for press releases and opinion polls. Citizens are actively participating in online political reporting too, through publishing eyewitness accounts, political commentary, crowd-sourcing and fact-checking information (of political manifestos and media reports alike). It is therefore growing increasingly important to understand how political journalism is evolving through new communicative forms and practices, in order to critique its epistemological role and function in democratic societies, and examine how these interventions influence daily online political reporting across different national contexts.

Foreword Bob Franklin 1. Introduction: Online reporting of elections Einar Thorsen 2. "The People's Debate": The CNN/YouTube debates and the demotic voice in political journalism Matt Carlson and Eran Ben-Porath 3. Remediating #Iranelection: Journalistic strategies for positioning citizen-made snapshots and text bites from the 2009 Iranian post-election conflict Rune Saugmann Andersen 4. Online Journalism and Election Reporting in India Saayan Chattopadhyay 5. A Journey Through 10 Countries: Online election coverage in Africa Ben Akoh and Kwami Ahiabenu, II 6. "Second-Order" Elections and Online Journalism: A comparison of the 2009 European Parliament elections' coverage in Greece, Sweden and the United Kingdom Asimina Michailidou 7. (Not) The Twitter Election: The dynamics of the #ausvotes conversation in relation to the Australian media ecology Jean Burgess and Axel Bruns 8. Social Media as Beat: Tweets as a news source during the 2010 British and Dutch elections Marcel Broersma and Todd Graham