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Trends and Changes in Journal ofPolitical Marketing Titles 2002–2011Christine B. Williams aa Bentley University , Waltham , Massachusetts , USAPublished online: 14 Mar 2012.

To cite this article: Christine B. Williams (2012) Trends and Changes in Journal of Political MarketingTitles 2002–2011, Journal of Political Marketing, 11:1-2, 4-7, DOI: 10.1080/15377857.2012.642702

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15377857.2012.642702

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Trends and Changes in Journal of PoliticalMarketing Titles 2002–2011

CHRISTINE B. WILLIAMSBentley University, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA

This essay highlights some of the interesting findings from a preliminarycontent analysis comparing the first five years (2002–2006) with the secondfive years (2007–2011) of articles published in the Journal of PoliticalMarketing. The inventory consists of 214 individual publication titles exclud-ing book reviews. This is part of a larger project to characterize the evolutionof political marketing through study of the scholarly record published inthe journal. The complete study will include not only article titles but alsokeywords, abstracts, and authorship.

Titles do not in themselves depict the full depth and breadth of subjectmatter covered in the journal over the past decade. Some categories appearin the text where they receive substantial coverage, which is not captured inthe titles. Titles can, however, provide a snapshot of some of the trends andchanges over time. These trends may suggest fruitful avenues for furtherresearch by identifying topics that have been underrepresented as well assignaling where a mature body of scholarship has emerged and wherenew or unanswered questions lie.

Although the large majority of journal article titles do not reference aparticular country or geographic region, among those that do, the UnitedStates dominates with twice as many mentions as the next largest group,Europe. Among European countries, after the United Kingdom, Greece isrepresented in the next most titles. As a separate category, Eastern Europewas singled out in six article titles in the period from 2002 through 2006,but in none in the five subsequent years. A similar pattern is evident forOceana: four titles reference Australia and New Zealand in the early period,but none thereafter. The inventory of titles evidences little to no attention toAfrica, the Middle East, or Latin or South America as regions or specificallynamed countries. It is also clear that subnational contexts receive scant atten-tion relative to national ones; global regions such as Europe (e.g., European

Address correspondence to Christine B. Williams, Department of Global Studies, BentleyUniversity, 175 Forest Street, Waltham, MA 02452, USA. E-mail: cwilliams@bentley.edu

Journal of Political Marketing, 11:4–7, 2012Copyright # Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1537-7857 print=1537-7865 onlineDOI: 10.1080/15377857.2012.642702

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Union, Central Europe) or Latin America do somewhat better. Thus, whilejournal offerings have international representation and some geographicdiversity, there is room for greater attention to a wider array of countriesand for more cross-country and cross-cultural comparative studies. Such linesof inquiry hold significant potential for academic learning and diffusion ofinnovative marketing strategies and techniques.

Election campaigns remain a dominant focus of journal articles, asevidenced by the inclusion of one or both of those terms or variants thereofin 65 titles evenly distributed across the decade. In addition, voters, the elec-torate, public or specific segments of it (e.g., women or youth), audiences, orconsumers appear as objects of study in large numbers of article titles (30). Butthis represents a shift in attention since there were twice as many references inthe last five years compared with the first five years of publication. Gender orwomen is the most prevalent (four titles) subgroup focus in the 10-year inven-tory, followed by race or ethnicity as a general subject (two titles) or specificsubgroup thereof (Latino=a in two titles). Youth is a recent interest (threetitles) beginning in 2006. Understanding targeted or micro=niche marketingand its implications is an important new area that could profit from an infusionof scholarly research. Questions about citizen representation and politicalparticipation are fundamental to democratic governance.

Candidates, in general or specifically named individuals, are alsofrequent subjects: these terms receive 16 title references, the large majority(11) since 2006. Also within the electoral domain, political parties are refer-enced in a constant number of titles (11 and 12 for each period, respectively).Practitioner references—to political consultants, image makers, or campaignprofessionals—are mentioned in only eight titles spread over the range ofyears. Government leaders or institutions appear only occasionally in titles(4 times each period), and other nongovernmental entities such as interestgroups, NGOs, or corporations (lobbying or advocacy activities) are evenrarer topics, as evidenced by a total of just six mentions. Scholarly recog-nition of ‘‘the permanent campaign’’ (a term coined by Patrick Caddell in1977 and documented by Sidney Blumenthal in 1982) generated a spurt ofempirical research in political science and related fields between 2000 and2005. The role of marketing in public relations campaigns and public policypromotion by governmental and nongovernmental actors is overdue forfurther study.

Interest in Internet-hosted technologies is sustained throughout the dec-ade but evolves from studies focusing on campaign Web sites in the first halfto online videos, political blogs, and social media in the most recent issue.This is consistent with the diversification and proliferation of technology insociety as a whole. In contrast to interest in the Internet, television is barelyrepresented: in the first five years it appears in only three titles and in thenext five years only in one. Media more generally (including news, newscoverage, or political communication) are better represented, with nearly

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five times greater coverage than television over the decade’s worth of titles.Thus, we see in these trends that technology is increasingly integral topolitical marketing, which goes hand in hand with the increasing professio-nalization of campaigns, at least in the United States and European countries,which receive the most coverage in the journal.

Some terminology seems to drop out of favor over the passage of time.The word (political) advertising, for example, appears in nine titles prior to2006, but only in two thereafter. Customer relationship marketing (CRM, cus-tomer-oriented e-government) is another example of a focus that emerges in2003 and 2005, but it does not recur in titles thereafter. After a flurry of inter-est in 2002 and 2003, the term e-government completely disappears fromjournal article titles. The subject democracy is referenced in twice as manytitles in the first five years compared with the last five, which is perhaps areflection of the heightened interest in emerging democracies and nationbuilding during that earlier period. Articles on terrorism and September 11also appear in those earlier years, whereas the later period includes but a sin-gle title focused on international political events (excluding elections)—oneabout the marketing of war, for which there is an analogous title in 2002 aswell. These examples demonstrate that occurrences in the real world notonly attract scholarly interest, they also afford opportunities to apply and testextant marketing theories and concepts.

Not surprisingly, market or marketing, preceded by various modifiers,occurs frequently in journal article titles and is evenly represented over theyears. The specific term political marketing is the most common variant,appearing in more than half of the two dozen mentions in each five-yearperiod. It is also interesting that in recent years more than two-thirds ofthe category references are to political marketing specifically, while in theearly period just over half use that specific term. Instead, a quarter of themarketing references for that time frame are to other unique modifiers:(‘‘Machiavellian,’’ ‘‘warfare,’’ ‘‘imperial,’’ ‘‘civic,’’ and ‘‘relationship’’). Thesetrends suggest that the scholarly community is coalescing around commonterminology, a hallmark of a maturing field of inquiry.

Additional evidence also demonstrates maturation of the field. The wordtheory or a close synonym (approach, perspective, framework) is found inonly one title in the first five years of publication, but seven times in the mostrecent period. While that may be a relatively small number of referencesoverall, it obviously only incompletely captures the degree to which scholarshave been attentive to theoretical concerns in the content of their articles. Inaddition, a number of titles include references to social construction or con-structivism, knowledge generation, ontology and epistemology, concepts, orconceptualizing, all integrally related to theory or a component of it. Ideally,we will begin to see greater integration of theoretical and empirical researchwith the passage of time rather than what currently appears to be a dichot-omization into these two distinct types of articles, with those focused on

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practice (e.g., campaign professionals) representing a third and likewiseseparate domain.

This examination of article titles has revealed some interesting trendsand changes in the evolution of political marketing scholarship over the pastdecade. A more detailed analysis of article keywords and abstracts shouldprovide additional insights and corroborating evidence for these findings.This anniversary issue features a representative selection of retrospectiveand prospective analyses of the maturing field of political marketing.

AUTHOR NOTE

Christine B. Williams, Professor of Political Science in the Department ofGlobal Studies at Bentley University, received her M.A. and Ph.D. degreesfrom Indiana University. Dr. Williams currently serves as North AmericanManaging Editor of the Journal of Political Marketing, as Associate Editorand on the senior Editorial Board of the Journal of Information Technologyand Politics, and on the executive board of the Digital Government Society,among others. Her research area is political communication, with emphasison new and emerging technologies and e-government. Dr. Williams is amember of a National Science Foundation funded project team studyingdesign issues for police and government agency collaboration using publicsafety networks. Her work has appeared in academic journals and confer-ence proceedings, trade and professional association publications, as wellas news media outlets worldwide.

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