The field of media is ever changing. With advances such as Facebook or Twitter, it’s hard to remember a time when they were not a part of everyone’s lives, when even ten years ago, none of it was available. There have been e-mail, and similar medias, but programs like Facebook and Twitter are not helping to carve out the future. Almost every business out there now has a Facebook or Twitter account, sharing information, deals and news to their subscribers.

Dr. John Hendricks, director of the Division of Communication and Contemporary Culture and professor of communication at Stephen F. Austin State University

Yet despite the growing appeal, the new media had never been used in a presidential race before Barack Obama used it to help spread his messages which helped lead to his election in 2008.

Dr. John Hendricks, director of the Division of Communication and Contemporary Culture and professor of communication at Stephen F. Austin State University, was quite taken by the technical achievements of Obama’s campaign and wrote about them in his new book, “Communicator-in-Chief: How Barack Obama Won the White House Using New Media Technologies.”

Hendricks’ book has recently been awarded the Edited Scholarly Book Award from the National Communication Association’s Applied Communication Division.

“I was fascinated watching the 2008 election and the way that Obama was using new media technology,” Hendricks said. “I was impressed with the way Obama was targeting messages towards specific demographics with technology and McCain was not doing that. I felt like John McCain was way behind in terms of the use of technology.”

“As one who likes to watch politics as sort of a spectator’s sport and then a scholar who is interested in technology, particularly media and the way it covers campaigns, I thought that would make a pretty cool book,” he said. “So I contacted a friend of mine, a person I respect as a fellow scholar, named Bob Denton who’s up at Virginia Tech. He’s written and edited a lot of books on politics and I told him what my idea was for the book and the different things I wanted to look at and examine and see if he wanted to sign onto the project.”

Dr. Robert E. Denton, Jr., thought the idea would make for an excellent project, and they immediately went to work.

“I went out and contacted scholars who specialize in certain areas, for instance, I’m not a video game player, so I didn’t know you could advertise in video games, but Barack Obama’s team knew how to do that,” he said.

One such spot was an Xbox 360 racing game called Burnout Paradise, where in-game billboards can be seen with Obama’s face and a message encouraging people to participate in early voting.

But video games were only part of the strategy, Hendricks said.

“They had people who had actually designed Facebook working for the campaign, and they created a website that looked like Facebook and it was specifically designed for the Obama campaign,” he said.

Hendricks began collecting all the information and wanted to get the book finished very quickly.

“The reason it is an edited book is because I needed to get that book out quickly after the election while the interest was still high,” he said. “Bob signed on and agreed to help and we did it in a fairly swift pace for books and book publishing.”

And the book seems to be selling very well for books of its type.

“Usually, publishers are happy with about 400 to 500 books sold, and the book has sold well over 1,000, so that’s pretty good, and I’m real pleased with it,” he said.

Obama’s team were responsible for a lot of technological firsts, but if Obama’s opponent McCain had been using the same tools, Hendricks doesn’t believe it wouldn’t have changed the end result.

“I’m not a political scientist, but my instinct is, no, it would not have changed things,” he said. “It probably could have tightened the numbers up, and it probably would have been a closer race than what the ultimate outcome was, but I think after eight years of certain policies, the electric becomes tired of it. We were in a recession, and I think the winds were blowing in a way that was favorable to Obama,” he said.

With the 2012 elections now less than a year away, the republican party has made certain changes, looking to use some of the same techniques.

“I think the republicans for 2012 have gotten much more technologically savvy,” Hendricks said. “They know they have to.”

Still, a year away there haven’t been that many new changes to the media world, he said.

“I think we’ll see more of the same stuff used more effectively,” Hendricks said. “We live in a society now where everyone is constantly looking at a cell phone, or their laptop, and we live in an era now where we have push media, not pull media. It’s user generated, and they want to choose what information comes to them.”

The book has gotten the attention of The National Communication Association which is the largest national organization to promote communication scholarship and education. It is a non-profit organization and has more than 8,000 educators, practitioners and students who work and reside in all 50 states and more than 20 countries.

The National Communication Association has awarded Hendricks’ book the Edited Scholarly Book Award.

“I’m quite humbled by that fact,” he said. “The National Communication Association is the largest association for communication scholars in the nation. When I was notified, I asked if they had made a mistake, because I’m just a country boy form Arkansas.”

Hendricks said he was glad to see that a book that came out of SFA could be recognized for such an award.

“I think it shows that good research can be conducted from right here at SFA in Nacogdoches,” he said. “I told my wife, they’re going to know they made a mistake when they hear my country twang. You never think while you’re doing it that it might be recognized, you just have fun doing the work.