One of the more enduring lines of inquiry involving the study of the presidency in recent decades has considered the public aspects of the job—how, where, and to whom the president communicates. Even more importantly, studies of late have begun to move beyond the traditional quantitative metrics and data points of “how much” presidents communicate to consider why this topic matters in the first place. The long-held assumption that what presidents say matters greatly within the political and policy-making processes has been replaced with a better understanding, not only of how media technologies shape the political environment in which presidents attempt to govern, but also of the changes in how citizens use media in an attempt to stay engaged and informed. Media fragmentation, a hyperpartisan electorate, and rapidly changing technologies are just a few of the challenges faced when trying to develop a White House communication strategy, and they are also essential topics in evaluating contemporary presidential connections to the American public.

In The Ubiquitous Presidency: Presidential Communication and Digital Democracy in Tumultuous Times, Joshua M. Scacco and Kevin Coe analyze the new realities of presidential communication within the digital media landscape as they seek to develop a new theoretical framework for understanding that communication. Dating back to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s use of radio or John F. Kennedy’s use of television, a “mythology” has existed about how much impact presidential words can have on political and policy outcomes. Scholarship on the topic has focused on “visibility, adaptation, and control,” which were the goals of the modern presidency. By the turn of the twenty-first century, those goals still existed, but “the evolution of media, the public, and executive influence has permanently altered the contexts in which presidents work to meet their communicative goals” (pp. 2–3). The traditional view of the rhetorical presidency is no longer an adequate paradigm through which to study presidential communication, because ubiquity is now the norm. Whether through Barack Obama’s overexposure through pop culture venues or Donald Trump’s constant use of Twitter, “contemporary presidents create a nearly constant and highly visible communicative presence in political and nonpolitical arenas through the use of mass as well as targeted media” (p. 4).

Following the introductory chapter that addresses this conceptual framework, the next two chapters focus on the historical context of the ubiquitous presidency and the public expectations that go along with these significant changes to presidential communication. The evolution of media technologies helps explain how and why institutional adaptation followed, given the need for presidents to incorporate accessibility, personalization, and pluralism into communication strategies. Both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton found new ways to connect with the American public through venues considered nontraditional at the time, which served to increase personalization and informality in their public actions. Public expectations regarding the public presidency have shifted as well, and the authors offer original experimental and survey research to analyze this change: they find that the definition of what it means to act “presidential” has continued to evolve amidst shifting dynamics within the political environment. This effectively sets up the argument for why this research is so timely and relevant.

Both the Obama and Trump presidencies offer insightful case studies. The Obama years highlight the shift to the ubiquitous presidency with his “outreach efforts in traditional and nontraditional formats to drive attention … [which] touched the varied political and cultural roles the president filled” (p. 108). Social media played a large role in these efforts, demonstrated through the authors’ content analysis of attention data from more than 90 million presidential mentions on Twitter, online audiovisual material on the White House YouTube page, and communication surrounding the Affordable Care Act to analyze “semantic echoing” regarding this major policy initiative. They offer a similar analysis on the first two years of the Trump presidency that looks at attention data from Twitter, changes in communication strategy (given Trump’s unique use of Twitter), and the rise of Trump’s presidential incitement online. Although Obama had some success with visibility and control and showed an ability to adapt to new and innovative communication strategies, Trump “built from the adaptation that Obama had experimented with, but bent his efforts more toward visibility and control” (p. 140). Where Obama attempted to merge traditional presidential venues with innovative outreach through social media, Trump opted often to ignore traditional means of communicating in favor of Twitter, where he could have more control over the presidential message.

The norms of presidential communication have changed dramatically. Understanding how Kennedy used television in the early 1960s, how Reagan navigated the emergence of cable news and the 24-hour news cycle throughout the 1980s, and how Bill Clinton relied on “new media” formats to circumvent the White House press corps and take his message directly to the American public in the 1990s are all relevant areas of study to better understand the institutional changes to the public presidency. Yet, those topics alone cannot explain the complex relationship that the president now has with the American public. The research paradigm of the ubiquitous presidency, as presented by the authors, is novel, timely, and effective in providing a detailed roadmap for how researchers can continue to analyze this important topic. Areas for further study include intersecting contexts (for example, whether presidents can achieve visibility and control through personalized, accessible messaging); expanding effects (for example, how to better understand the effects of presidential communication on partisanship and national identity); interdisciplinary insights (incorporating other literatures on topics such as entertainment media or organizational communication for greater depth and breadth on the topic of presidential communication); and normative considerations (recognizing the consequences, both good and bad, of the ubiquitous presidency).

The authors conclude with an important reminder—the ability and capacity of the individual president, amidst the institutional factors, can and do still matter, but with an important caveat: “In an era of ubiquity, the force of this person in public life is enduring but remarkably fluid” (p. 161). Presidents of the modern era have all faced challenges in adapting to changing circumstances within the political environment, although those changes in presidential communicative opportunities occurred especially quickly during the Obama and Trump presidencies. Social and digital media can both enhance and constrain presidential powers within the scope of the public presidency, as this book shows. How future presidents build on those experiences and how that shapes the connection between the president and both the press and the public remain seminal questions when studying the contemporary presidency. In a book that is well written and researched, Scacco and Coe provide a compelling and innovative argument for how best to continue this essential area of inquiry for presidency scholars within multiple academic disciplines and, more importantly, why this new reality matters for democratic governance.