Trump, Twitter, and the American Democracy by Yu Ouyang & Richard W. Waterman

Author:Yu Ouyang & Richard W. Waterman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030442422
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Conclusion

Overall, the picture of Trump and his behavior on Twitter that we paint in this chapter is one of nuance and complexity. Examining the frequency of his tweets over time, we find that despite the common portrayal of Trump as someone who tweets excessively on a daily basis, the reality is closer to that of strategically minded politico who has mindfully crafted his rise in Republican politics. This is an important finding related to the president’s first mover advantage since we find that his tweets are not merely random thoughts but rather that of a strategic politician. Analyzing the content of his tweets, results of a structural topic model reveal a collection of tweets that is a mixture of carefully crafted tweets by staff that are aimed at promoting the Trump brand and of self-written tweets, spontaneous or otherwise, that reflect a stream-of-consciousness monologue by Trump himself.

Our results and discussions in this chapter indicate that, like many strategic elected officials or public figures, Trump’s presence on social media is more complicated than people often acknowledge. In the case of Trump, this is compounded by the fact that he would say things that most politicians would hardly ever consider. In fact, an over-emphasis on Trump’s exceptional rhetoric on Twitter would most likely obfuscate the true, underlying behavior: Twitter can be a strategic political communication tool, and Trump utilizes it to great effect.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.