In 2012, Tuxedo Stan, a domestic long-hair cat, “ran for mayor” of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and a year later Stan’s brother, Earl Grey, “ran for premier” of Nova Scotia. What separated Stan and Earl Grey (who ran under the banner of the Tuxedo Party) from other politically minded felines was that the Tuxedo Party campaigns were not stunt or joke campaigns. While the cats could obviously not take office, the two campaigns were nonetheless political advocacy campaigns, with a clearly articulated message to make life better for feral and stray cats. This paper argues that the Tuxedo Party successfully elevated the issue onto the political agenda through their savvy mix of social media, and the use of positive imagery of cats in their campaigns.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
Artwick, C. (2013). Reporters on Twitter: Product or service? Digital Journalism, 1(2), 212-228.
Baumgertner, F., & Jones, B. (1993). Agendas and Instability in American Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Baumgartner, F., & Jones, B. (2005). The Politics of Attention: How Government Prioritizes Problems. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Baumgartner, F., De Bouf, S., & Boydstun, A. (2008). The Decline of the Death Penalty and the Discovery of Innocence. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bennett, L., & Segerberg, A. (2011). Digital media and the personalization of collective action: Social technology and the organization of protests against the global economic crisis. Information, Communication & Society, 14(6), 770-779.
Bennett, W. (2003). Communicating global activism. Information, Community & Society, 6(2), 143-168.
Berland, J. (2008). Cat and mouse. Cultural Studies, 22, 3&4 (May-July), 431-454.
Bortree, D., & Seltzer, T. (2009). Dialogic strategies and outcomes: An analysis of environmental advocacy groups’ Facebook profiles. Public Relations Review, 35(3), 317-319.
Broersma, M., & Graham, T. (2012). Social media as beat: Tweets as a news source during the 2010 British and Dutch elections. Journalism Practice, 6(3), 403-419.
Broersma, M., & Graham, T. (2013). Twitter as a news source. Journalism Practice, 7(4), 446-464.
Brown, S. D., Perrella, A. M. L., & Kay, B. J. (2010). Revisiting local campaign effects: An experiment involving literature mail drops in the 2007 Ontario election. Political Science Faculty Publications. Retrieved from http://scholars.wlu.ca/poli_faculty/13.
Caren, N., & Gaby, S. (2011). Occupy online: Facebook and the spread of Occupy Wall Street. Social Science Research Network paper, October 24, 2011. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1943168.
Carpenter, D. (2002). Groups, the media, agency waiting costs, and FDA drug approval. American Journal of Political Science, 46(3), 490-505.
CBC News. (2012). Ellen DeGeneres endorses Tuxedo Stan for mayor. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/ellen-degeneres-endorses-tuxedo-stan-for-mayor-1.1242385.
Chisholm, K. (2014). Me: The Tuxedo Stan Story. Upper Tantalon: Ailurophile Publishing.
Cooney, N. (2011). Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us About Spreading Social Change. New York: Lantern Books.
Daston, L., & Mitman, G. (2005). The how and why of thinking with animals. In Thinking With Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism (pp. 1-14). New York: Columbia University Press.
Doebel, S., & Gabriel, S. (2015). Which Farm Animal Photos Are Most Likely to Inspire People to Eat Vegan? Humane League Labs.
Edwards, H. (2013). Pain in public. In Representations of Pain in Art and Visual Culture (M. P. Di Bella & J. Elkins, Eds., pp. 88-100). New York: Routledge.
Farrell, H., & Drezner, D. (2008). The power and politics of blogs. Public Choice, 134(1-2), 15-30.
Freeman, C. P. (2014). Framing Farming: Communication Strategies for Animal Rights. Amsterdam & New York: Rodopi.
Greenberg, J., & MacAulay, M. (2009). NPO 2.0? Exploring the web presence of environmental organizations in Canada. Global Media Journal, 2(1), 63-88.
Grzywinska, I., & Borden, J. (2012). The impact of social media on traditional media agenda setting theory—the case study of Occupy Wall Street. In Agenda Setting: Old and New Problems in Old and New Media (B. Dobek-Ostrowska, B. Lodzki, & W. Wanta, Eds. pp. 133-155). Wroclaw: Wroclaw University Press.
Guo, C., & Saxton, G. (2013). Tweeting social change: How social media are changing nonprofit advocacy. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 43(1), 57-79.
Hawthorne, M. (2012). How do graphic images affect animal advocacy? Retrieved from http://strikingattheroots.wordpress.com/2012/11/01/how-do-graphic-images-affect-animal-advocacy/.
Howard, P. N., Duffy, A., Freelon, D., Hussain, M., Mari, W., & Mazaid, W. (2011). Opening closed regimes: What was the role of social media during the Arab Spring? Seattle: PIPTI. Retrieved from http://pitpi.org/index.php/2011/09/11/opening-closed-regimes-what-was-the-role-of-social-media-during-the-arab-spring/.
Jackson, N., & Lilleker, D. (2009). MPs and e-representation: Me, Myspace and I. British Politics, 4, 236-264.
Jenner, E. (2012). News photographs and environmental agenda setting. Policy Studies Journal, 40(2), 274-301.
Jones, B., & Wolfe, M. (2010). Public policy and the media: The interplay of mass communication and political decision making. In Public Policy and the Mass Media: An Information Processing Approach (S. Koch-Baumgarten & K. Voltmer, Eds., pp. 17-43). New York: Routledge.
Khondker, H. (2011). Role of new media in the Arab Spring. Globalizations, 8(5), 675-679.
Kushner, J., Siegel, D., & Stanwick, H. (1997). Ontario municipal elections: Voting trends and determinants of electoral success in a Canadian province. Canadian Journal of Political Science, 30(3), 539-553.
Lasorsa, D., Lewis, S., & Holton, A. (2012). Normalizing Twitter. Journalism Studies, 13(1), 19-36.
Lawrence, R. (2000). The Politics of Force: Media and the Construction of Police Brutality. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Lee, P. (2013). PET CONNECTION: Colwell examining animal cruelty issue. The Chronicle Hearld, November 3. Retrieved from http://thechronicleherald.ca/artslife/1164919-pet-connection-colwell-examining-animal-cruelty-issue.
Linsky, M. (1986). Impact: How the Press Affects Federal Policymaking. New York: WW Norton and Company.
Lotan, G., Graeff, E., Ananny, M., Gaffney, D., Pearce, I., & Boyd, D. (2011). Arab Spring: The revolutions were tweeted: Information flows during the 2011 Tunisia and Egyptian revolutions. International Journal of Communication, 5, 1375-1405.
Lovejoy, K., & Saxton, G. (2012). Information, community, and action: How non-profit organizations use social media. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 17, 337-353.
Lovejoy, K., Waters, R., & Saxton, G. (2012). Engaging stakeholders through Twitter: How nonprfit organizations are getting more out of 140 characters or less. Public Relations Review, 38(2), 313-318.
McCombs, M. (2004). Setting the Agenda: The Mass Media and Public Opinion. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Merolla, J., & Stephenson, L. (2007). Strategic voting in Canada: A cross time analysis. Electoral Studies, 26(2), 235-246.
Morell, V. (2014). Causes of the furred and feathered rule the Internet. National Geographic, March 14, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/03/140314-social-media-animal-rights-groups-animal-testing-animal-cognition-world/#close-modal.
Nabi, R. L. (1998). The effect of disgust-eliciting visuals on attitudes toward animal experimentation. Communication Quarterly, 46(4), 472-484.
O’Connor, J. (2013). Tuxedo Stan—the world-famous Halifax cat who ran for mayor—has died of kidney cancer. National Post, September 9. Retrieved from http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/09/09/tuxedo-stan-the-world-famous-halifax-cat-who-ran-for-mayor-has-died-of-kidney-cancer/.
Obar, J., Zube, P., & Lampe, C. (2012). Advocacy 2.0: An analysis of how advocacy groups in the United States perceive and use social media as tools for facilitating civic engagement and collective action. Journal of Information Policy, 2, 1-25.
Petray, T. (2011). Protest 2.0: Online interactions and Aboriginal activists. Media, Culture and Society, 33(6), 923-940.
Ritchin, F. (2013). Bending the Frame: Photojournalism, Documentary, and the Citizen. New York: Aperture.
Sayre, B., Bode, L., Shah, D., Wilcox, D., & Shah, C. (2010). Agenda setting in a digital age: Tracking attention to California Proposition 8 in social media, online news, and conventional news. Policy & Internet, 2(2), 7-32.
Tuxedo Party. (2013a). Earl Grey’s Pledge of Compassion and Action. Retrieved from http://tuxedostan.com/earl-greys-pledge-of-compassion-and-action/.
Tuxedo Party. (2013b). The Tuxedo Party of Canada election platform Nova Scotia 2013. Retrieved from http://tuxedostan.com/earl-greys-campaign-platform/.
Tuxedo Party. (n.d.). Tuxedo Stan’s bio. Retrieved from http://tuxedostan.com/tuxedo-stans-bio/.
Utz, S. (2009). The (potential) benefits of campaigning via social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 14(2), 221-243.
Van Aelst, P., & Walgrave, S. (2011). Minimal or massive? The political agenda-setting power of the mass media according to different methods. International Journal of Press/Politics, 16(3), 295-313.
Vergeer, M., Hermans, L., & Sams, S. (2013). Online social networks and micro-blogging in political campaigning: The exploration of a new campaign tool and a new campaign style. Party Politics, 19(3), 477-501.
Wolfe, M. (2012). Putting the brakes or pressing on the gas? Media attention and the speed of policymaking. Policy Studies Journal, 40(1), 109-126.
Zeller, F., & Hermida, A. (2015). When tradition meets immediacy and interaction. Sur le Journalism, About Journalism, Sobre Jornalismo, 4(1).
All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 385 | 75 | 23 |
Full Text Views | 185 | 6 | 1 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 41 | 5 | 0 |
In 2012, Tuxedo Stan, a domestic long-hair cat, “ran for mayor” of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and a year later Stan’s brother, Earl Grey, “ran for premier” of Nova Scotia. What separated Stan and Earl Grey (who ran under the banner of the Tuxedo Party) from other politically minded felines was that the Tuxedo Party campaigns were not stunt or joke campaigns. While the cats could obviously not take office, the two campaigns were nonetheless political advocacy campaigns, with a clearly articulated message to make life better for feral and stray cats. This paper argues that the Tuxedo Party successfully elevated the issue onto the political agenda through their savvy mix of social media, and the use of positive imagery of cats in their campaigns.
All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 385 | 75 | 23 |
Full Text Views | 185 | 6 | 1 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 41 | 5 | 0 |