Every few decades, presidents and candidates for president upend American politics by turning new technology into a potent political weapon. Consider how Franklin Roosevelt used the radio to hold âfireside chatsâ with a Depression-wracked American public, or how John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan used their superior understanding of the visual component of television to build support for themselves and to stymie their political opponents. More recently, twenty-first century presidential candidates like John McCain in 2000, Howard Dean in 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008 each broke new ground in the use of small-donor fundraising and voter contact through the internet. These candidates continued a long tradition of communications technology impacting American politics that stretches all the way back to the pamphleteers whose stoking of the fires of the American revolution was possible thanks to the invention of the printing press.
To this list we must now add Donald Trump, whose use of Twitterâthe social networking platform through which users can broadcast their thoughts to the world in 140-character morsels known as âtweetsââwas crucial to his political rise and his unlikely victory in the 2016 presidential election. Trump is not the first politician to use Twitter since it was launched in 2006; having a Twitter presence has become as necessary for a presidential candidate as having a web site, television ads, and campaign volunteers. But Trumpâs use of the platform wasâand continues to beâunique. Before becoming a candidate, Trump used Twitter to turn himself from a real estate mogul turned reality show host into a political gadfly, propagating absurd, racist conspiracy theories about President Obamaâs birthplace and citizenship and weighing in on other political developments. As a candidate in 2016, some of Trumpâs late-night (or early-morning) tweets set the terms of a dayâs morning news cycle. Other tweets took aim at his opponents in the Republican primary and in the general election, or at reporters, news organizations, and even private citizens who criticized him or his campaign .
Twitter has been such an important part of Trumpâs political persona for so long that we risk forgetting how unusual it is, just as many Americans may rarely stop and consider how bizarre it is that Donald Trump, object of endless New York tabloid newspaper coverage and Spy magazine parodies when he entered the national conversation in the 1980s, now occupies the White House. This volume represents a first attempt to consider the impact Twitter had on the 2016 presidential election, both at the hands of Donald Trump and at those of the other candidates who sought the presidency in that contest. The impact has already been felt beyond the election, as Trumpâs social media habits have continued in the transition from campaigning to governing. Only six months into his presidency, a Fox News poll found that only 13% of voters approved of his tweets (Blanton 2017).
In the second chapter in this volume, Marietta, Cote, Farley, and Murphy explore the background of Twitter and argue that aspects of Twitter favor each of the two major parties in different ways. They argue that for each side to tweet effectively, they need to focus on simplicity and threats. Indeed, they demonstrate, by analyzing retweeted messages, Clintonâs focus on examples of oppression, a type of issue where her partyâs message is straightforward, while Trump emphasized threats. On the flip side of that argument, and more surprisingly, Trump did not emphasize the economy, since the conservative economic argument relies on a more complex set of arguments. Clinton did not emphasize foreign policy and terrorism for a similar reason, while Trump was more likely to do so.
In Chap. 3, Granberg-Rademacker and Parsneau delve into the early part of the 2016 campaign by examining tweets from before the Iowa caucus through Super Tuesday. Their analysis suggests that where the candidates stood in the race determined their Twitter strategy, with Clintonâs front-runner status meaning fewer tweets, aimed more at the other party, with an eye toward the general election. Sanders, as the challenger to the front-runner, tweeted significantly more. Republicans , on the other hand, had to deal with a large primary field, so were more often focused on intra-party conflict. This resulted in significant partisan differences, with Trump and Cruz attacking their primary opponents more, and Democratic candidates Sanders and Clinton focused more on policy . The authors demonstrate that while Trump focused on Twitter to attack primary opponents and his own party, other candidates used Twitter to make policy statements, promote their organizational efforts, or provide informational tweets. However, among voters it was Sanders and Trump who generated the most enthusiasm as measured through retweets.
In Chap. 4, Kim Hixon argues that Trumpâs tweets can provide insight into his character and image. Unsurprisingly, the main candidate image attributes identified in Trumpâs primary tweets are anger/aggressiveness and confidence. He also analyzes which image attributes gained earned media or free publicity. Comparing this subset of earned media tweets to all the tweets reveals a difference between the candidate-projected image and the media-projected image of Trump. One-third of Trumpâs tweets contained the anger/aggressive attribute, but a much higher percentage of these tweets was mentioned in the newspaper articles. The media coverage of Trumpâs tweets helped him have a much higher value in earned media than his opponents. This advantage, coupled with his victories, leads to questions about how Trumpâs tweets will affect candidate messaging and candidate image in future campaigns.
Chapter 5 gives us an overview of the what, when, and how of Trumpâs Twitter habits. For the âwhen,â Perry and Joyce demonstrate that a quarter of Trumpâs tweeting occurred in the morning, influencing the nature of the traditional news cycle by coming just in time for the morning cable news shows. The âhowâ includes a good deal of exclamation points and all capital letters, while the âwhatâ includes primarily negativity and criticisms of his ubiquitous opponents. However, it was those negative or all caps tweets that were often among the most popular. Trumpâs ability to attract news coverage may have been linked to both the timing of his tweets and their popularity, particularly the most controversial ones.
Mark OâGorman in Chap. 6 examines Trumpâs environmental policy tweets, particularly the frequency, form, and function of tweets related to global warming and climate change. This is especially interesting given Trumpâs evolution on this issue from his concern during the time before he became a presidential candidate to claiming it is a hoax as his presidential run neared. Surprisingly, he only tweeted once about global warming while officially a presidential candidate. However, during the Obama Administration, Trumpâs 144 global warming or climate change tweets were all negative and used his unusual style of tweeting. Finally, OâGorman analyzes the misconceptions about climate change in Trumpâs tweets and catalogs his revisionist environmental policy .
Chapter 7 concludes the book by comparing humorous political images on Twitter and other social media outlets. These images can frame issues and make a clear statement about candidates in a way that is easy for anyone to comprehend, regardless of their level of political interest. These images can also promote or hinder the level of polarized conflict or use of gender stereotypes , as well as evoke emotions. Was Twitter used similarly to other forms of social media, or did it stand out? Todd Belt determines that while most images were used to attack political candidates and figures regardless of source, political images on Twitter were slightly more partisan, less likely to employ masculine stereotypes, and less emotionally evocative than other social media outlets. This speaks to Twitterâs particular format and audience. Humorous political images on Twitter are likely to appeal to a more politically informed and educated audience, compared to sites like Facebook.
Twitterâs impact is such an overwhelming fact of modern American politics that it has obscured attention to how it impacts politics. This volume is a first effort at studying the role Twitter played in the 2016, and how this social media platform enabled Trumpâs rise and affected citizen politics. Above and beyond Trumpâs use of Twitter, there is also the question of how his rivals and other Twitter users engaged in political activity through the platform. To what extent did candidates use Twitter to communicate with their supporters? How did their supporters respond? And what of citizensâ own political engagement on Twitter?
These chapters are based on research presented at the third American Elections conference held at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics on the campus of Saint Anselm College. They come from scholars of political science, communications, public policy...
