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period of the end of World War II and over the succeeding 40 years television would enter into more and more people’s homes. As access to television increased “survey evidence from the 1950s-1970s shows that roughly twice as many people chose television as their most important source of information about presidential campaigns as chose newspapers” (Gentzkow et al. 2986). Television was pivotal in the 1960 presidential contest, when the image of a sweating and stubbled Richard Nixon contrasted with that of John F Kennedy during the Presidential debate. The telegenic Kennedy thereafter used television as a nationwide platform to bring the president and the people closer together and garner support for controversial policies like the Bay of Pigs, the race to the moon, and the Vietnam war. When the far less telegenic Lyndon B. Johnson regularly used television as a tool of presidential political communication, it indicated that this form of media was now the pre-eminent tool of political communication. Television allowed the president to seemingly directly speak to the people and be able to communicate important policy decisions such as Johnson’s decision not to seek a second term – the first time such an announcement had been made. To this day “American U.S. consumers watch more TV at an average of 3.8 hours per day” (Miller and McKerrow 68) and its impact affects the political landscape, due to television’s widespread ability to showcase information and present the president live. However, despite the appearance of a direct line of communication between the president and the public through television, such is not the case. As with radio, television appearances by the president are heavily scripted by speechwriters whose role is to present the President as an inclusive, accessible, friendly and reasonable person, whom the American public should consider supporting. In this way, the interaction between the president and the public is strongly mediated.

Through the 20th century presidents have used communication tools to create and manage an image that he hopes will boost political support for him, his administration and its policies. This building of image through communication tools has been vital to the presidency because it allows the president to build public acceptance and generate public consent when making decisions that could affect the country or the world. However, communication tools between the president and the public are designed to craft a relationship between the president and potential supporters, and in seeking to craft a relationship are managed by the Presidential staff so that communication tools present the President to the public in the most favourable light.

In the late 1990s the world wide web started to become the media platform that was most central in people’s lives. The Internet fundamentally transformed political communications. Websites dedicated to forums of political conversations between diverse sets of people eventually gave way t