The Role Of Twitter In The 2016 Us Election

This book assembles six chapters by respected and emerging scholars in political science and communication to produce a first sustained look at Twitter's role in the 2016 US Presidential Election. While much attention has already been paid to Trump's use of Twitter as a phenomenon—how it helps drive news cycles, distracts attention from other matters, or levies attacks against rivals, the news media, and other critics—there has been little scholarly analysis of the impact Twitter played in the actual election. These chapters apply an impressive diversity of theoretical explanations and methodological approaches to explore how this new technology shaped an American election, and what impact it could have in the future.

This book takes a social science approach to address two related questions: (1) what does Donald Trump say on Twitter? and (2) why? Since entering the 2016 Presidential Election, Donald Trump’s tweets have been a major part of his communications strategy with the public. While the popular media has devoted considerable attention to selected tweets, it is less clear what those selected tweets tell us about Trump the businessman, the political candidate, and, finally, the President of the United States. We argue that to fully understand Trump, we must take a more comprehensive approach to examining all of his activities on Twitter. Overall, our analysis presents a strikingly complex picture of Trump and how he uses Twitter. Not only has his pattern of tweets changed over time, we find that Trump’s use of Twitter is more deliberate than he has been given credit. Like most other politicians, Trump is strategically-minded about his presence on social media.

Presidential elections in the United States are, and always have been, major events in American and world history. They are watched by millions of people not only in the US but all over the world. A circumstance that is often not noticed by less informed viewers is that the most famous part of the elections, namely the presidential inauguration, is preceded by weeks, months and even years of presidential campaigning, where candidates raise and spend vast amounts of money in order to convince the American citizens to give them their vote. These campaigns have commonly consisted of journeys throughout the entire country, rallies, conventions and speeches but lately, another medium has been taking a great role in the competition: Social Media. Especially during the 2016 election cycle Twitter became a campaign tool that never has been used during political campaigns to this extent before. Donald Trump in particular has made use of Twitter to such a great extent that it sometimes even seemed like his official speaking tube. The introductory chapters of this work are dedicated to Obama’s social media pio-neer work during his 2008 election cycle. Then the Twitter phenomenon Trump will be analyzed based on an analysis of recurring patterns in a selection of his tweets. His controversial behavior online as well as offline will be set out as well. From the contents: Trump; Campaign; Twitter; Social Media; Politics; Presidential Elections; USA Dem Überblick über politische Wahlkampfstrategien vor und seit der Instrumentalisierung der neuen Medien ist eine konzise und zielführende Einführung in das US-amerikanische Wahlsystem vorangestellt. Zudem werden grundlegende Begrifflichkeiten der neuen Medien unter Bezug auf einschlägige Quellen angemessen erläutert. Die Wende hin zu den neuen Medien im Präsidentschaftswahlkampf seit Obama wird sehr gut zusammengefasst und mit Fragen der Wahlbeteiligung bzw. zur vermeintlichen Politikverdrossenheit in Verbindung gebracht. Im zweiten Kapitel wird Donald Trump als „Twitter-Phänomen“ diskutiert und aufgezeigt, welche Rolle sein Verhalten in der Kampagne einnahm. Es folgt eine genauere Analyse der Muster in den Tweets, gestützt auf gut ausgewählte medienanalytische Quellen.

Facebook, Twitter and Instagram create new ways to market political campaigns and new channels for candidates and voters to interact. This volume investigates the role and impact of social media in the 2016 U.S. election, focusing specifically on the presidential nominating contest. Through case studies, survey research and content analysis, the researchers employ both human and machine coding to analyse social media text and video content. Together, these illustrate the wide variety of methodological approaches and statistical techniques that can be used to probe the rich, vast stores of social media data now available. Individual chapters examine what different candidates posted about and which posts generated more of a response. The analyses shed light on what social media can reveal about campaign messaging strategies and explore the linkages between social media content and their audiences’ perceptions, opinions and political participation. The findings highlight similarities and differences among candidates and consider how continuity and change are manifest in the 2016 election. Finally, taking a look forward, the contributors consider the implications of their work for political marketing research and practice. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Political Marketing.

Presidential elections in the United States are, and always have been, major events in American and world history. They are watched by millions of people not only in the US but all over the world. A circumstance that is often not noticed by less informed viewers is that the most famous part of the elections, namely the presidential inauguration, is preceded by weeks, months and even years of presidential campaigning, where candidates raise and spend vast amounts of money in order to convince the American citizens to give them their vote. These campaigns have commonly consisted of journeys throughout the entire country, rallies, conventions and speeches but lately, another medium has been taking a great role in the competition: Social Media. Especially during the 2016 election cycle Twitter became a campaign tool that never has been used during political campaigns to this extent before. Donald Trump in particular has made use of Twitter to such a great extent that it sometimes even seemed like his official speaking tube. The introductory chapters of this work are dedicated to Obama's social media pio-neer work during his 2008 election cycle. Then the Twitter phenomenon Trump will be analyzed based on an analysis of recurring patterns in a selection of his tweets. His controversial behavior online as well as offline will be set out as well. From the contents: Trump; Campaign; Twitter; Social Media; Politics; Presidential Elections; USA Dem Uberblick uber politische Wahlkampfstrategien vor und seit der Instrumentalisierung der neuen Medien ist eine konzise und zielfuhrende Einfuhrung in das US-amerikanische Wahlsystem vorangestellt. Zudem werden grundlegende Begrifflichkeiten der neuen Medien unter Bezug auf einschlagige Quellen angemessen erlautert. Die Wende hin zu den neuen Medien im Prasidentschaftswahlkampf seit Obama wird sehr gut zusammengefasst und mit Fragen der Wahlbeteiligung bzw. zur vermeintlichen Politikverdrossenheit in Verbindung gebracht. Im zweit

How the 2016 news media environment allowed Trump to win the presidency The 2016 presidential election campaign might have seemed to be all about one man. He certainly did everything possible to reinforce that impression. But to an unprecedented degree the campaign also was about the news media and its relationships with the man who won and the woman he defeated. Words that Matter assesses how the news media covered the extraordinary 2016 election and, more important, what information—true, false, or somewhere in between—actually helped voters make up their minds. Using journalists' real-time tweets and published news coverage of campaign events, along with Gallup polling data measuring how voters perceived that reporting, the book traces the flow of information from candidates and their campaigns to journalists and to the public. The evidence uncovered shows how Donald Trump's victory, and Hillary Clinton's loss, resulted in large part from how the news media responded to these two unique candidates. Both candidates were unusual in their own ways, and thus presented a long list of possible issues for the media to focus on. Which of these many topics got communicated to voters made a big difference outcome. What people heard about these two candidates during the campaign was quite different. Coverage of Trump was scattered among many different issues, and while many of those issues were negative, no single negative narrative came to dominate the coverage of the man who would be elected the 45th president of the United States. Clinton, by contrast, faced an almost unrelenting news media focus on one negative issue—her alleged misuse of e-mails—that captured public attention in a way that the more numerous questions about Trump did not. Some news media coverage of the campaign was insightful and helpful to voters who really wanted serious information to help them make the most important decision a democracy offers. But this book also demonstrates how the modern media environment can exacerbate the kind of pack journalism that leads some issues to dominate the news while others of equal or greater importance get almost no attention, making it hard for voters to make informed choices.

Twitter already has become an important electoral communication tool between candidates, parties and their specific constituencies. No serious candidate campaign ignores Twitter, while political party organizations utilize Twitter to communicate with partisans, reinforce supporters, and mobilize voters. Whereas much scholarship to date has focused primarily on Twitter’s political usage in the United States, there still remain many questions about the political uses and effects of Twitter in a global context. Does Twitter effect how reporters interact with candidates or even with each other? Does Twitter increase voter participation? Who is tweeting about elections? Why do people use Twitter in electoral contexts? Which type of candidate is more likely to use Twitter and why? Do parties differ in their use of Twitter, and why? Does Twitter increase candidate-voter interaction? Is Twitter shaping elections in various system contexts, and if so how? What is the influence of system context on Twitter use by parties, candidates, reporters, and voters? Eloquently combining theory and practice, established and rising scholars in the field of political communication have been brought together to provide an essential overview of the influence of Twitter on elections in a comparative perspective. Readers of this book will not only learn everything there is to know about this specific influence of Twitter, but more broadly how to approach the study of various online tools in general.

Following the acclaim for The End of the Free Market, Ian Bremmer is back with Every Nation for Itself, where he addresses the next big issue for the shifting world economy. 'Smart and snappy ... provides the most cogent prediction of how the politics of a post-America world will play out' New Statesman What happens when nobody's running the world? The United States is in financial crisis and can't hold onto the reins of the G-20. But China has no interest in international leadership, Europe is trying to save the euro, and emerging powers like Brazil and India are focused on domestic development. No government has the time, resources or political capital needed to take an international lead. The world power structure is about to have a vacancy...at the top. Welcome to the G-Zero world, in which no single country has the power to shape a truly global agenda. That means we are about to see 20 years of conflict over economics, finance and climate change. Bestselling author and strategist Ian Bremmer reveals how world powers are rapidly turning into gated communities, locked in competition. Who will prevail? 'A prodigy in the US global commentariat. Mr Bremmer's rehearsal of the consequences should make us all wise up' Financial Times 'An author who is always full of insights' George Osborne Ian Bremmer is the president of the world's leading global political risk research and consulting firm, Eurasia Group. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Newsweek, and Harvard Business Review. His six books include The J Curve and The End Of The Free Market.