I know there has been no shortage of post-election commentary and celebrations, but before the election moves into the horizon of history, I would very much like to ask you for your help.
I am a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Surrey in the UK. Before becoming an academic, I briefly worked for the German World Service in DC and have had a longstanding interest in American politics, political activism, enthusiasm as well as media. I am also an occasional blogger on media and politics (here, for example, is my take on the Nate Silver vs Political Pundits debate).
I first undertook research on the enthusiasm surrounding Obama’s 2008 campaign four years ago. I would like to follow this up by interviews with those of you who supported and/or followed his campaign this year. I am particularly interested in how you followed the campaign, how you feel about the role that different media played in the run-up to the election, and your expectations for Obama’s second term.
This research takes places in form of a interviews (rather than a survey) and if you are interested, I will either email you questions or would happily interview you via Skype, whichever is more convenient for you.
I should add that being a sociologist, it’s probably not a big surprise that I subscribe to progressive politics myself and am excited about the possibilities sites such as Daily Kos give citizens to get engaged and share their views. Having said that, not being American myself this is non-partisan, non-commercial research, your data will be anonymised (unless you explicitly ask me not to), and published in academic, peer-reviewed journals, including open access journals. I will also send you a copy of any papers and reports, if you like.
If you can spare half an hour, I would really appreciate your help and am looking forward to hearing from you. If you would like to help, please send me a quick message with your contact details on here or via email (c.sandvoss@surrey.ac.uk).
Also, I am very grateful for any reposts and for making others aware of this research!
Thank you!
Cornel