Trump's dramatic electoral victory. Attestation to the power of space technology

Travail d'étude , 2016 , 10 Pages

Médias / Communication - Médias et Politique, Communication politique

Twitter which is a product of Computer Science and Technology advancements, improved the connenction between Donald Trump and the citizens of the United States of America in such a huge way. The flexibility, ease, as well as the interactive capacity of Twitter as a social networking platform, not only helped Donald Trump to build his brand as a potential presidential candidate but also established the most relevant platform where he could respond to any of the concerns of citizens in the most satisfactory way possible.

Notably, the public is more connected to a person who reaches out to the people. And Twitter to a large extent gave Donald Trump the possibility to reach out to the general public in a way that no other communication media could.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXCERPT

INTRODUCTION

HOW TWITTER HELPED TO CREATE DONALD TRUMP BRAND

HARNESSING THE POWER OF TWITTER FOR 2016 ELECTIONS

HOW TRUMP USES TWITTER: A SAMPLE OF TWEETS

CONCLUSION

REFERENCES

EXCERPT

Twitter which is a product of computer science and technology advancements, improved the connection between Donald Trump and the citizens of the United States of America in such a huge way. The flexibility, ease,as well as the interactive capacity of twitter as a social networking platform, not only helped Donald Trump to build his brand as a potential presidential candidate but also established the most relevant platform where he could respond to any of the concerns of citizens in the most satisfactory way possible. Notably, the public is more connected to a person who reaches out to the people. And Twitter to a large extent gave Donald Trump the possibility to reach out to the general public in a way that no other communication media could.

INTRODUCTION

The power of internet technology exacts its impulse far and wide. It started by impacting the industrial sectors. Now it has spread its reach to social aspects such as governance; with the transformative power of technological advancement in the mass media, fostering quite a lot of dynamics in governance as observed across the globe today. Over the last decade, the world has seen a great deal of transformative impact of the Internet as well as the cellular technology. For instance, where a few news journalists used to contribute to issues of national debates, now millions participate in such discourse courtesy of the information technology strategy available for mass use. There are billions of mobile phones and other handheld gadgets that have the capability to connect to the internet, thereby facilitating the tremendous transformative changes in communication(Naveed, 2012).

However, of great importance is social networking online platforms – perhaps the best testimony to the power of internet technology. The use of social media platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, and Snapchat, among others, stands out as a significant technological advancement that has taken the modern day communication to a whole new level. Social media has no limitation; it is applicable to a wide array of social perspectives. Political communication stands out as one of the latest beneficiaries of the power of social networking(Swenson, 2011). An excellent example of how computer science has transformed technology features Donald J. Trump, the President-Elect of the United States of America, as the best reference. The discussion below highlights an evaluation of how Twitter created Donald Trump as a brand. It also analyzes how he mastered the above social networking platform towards establishing and strengthening his potential to win in the year 2016 elections.

HOW TWITTER HELPED TO CREATE DONALD TRUMP BRAND

Although Donald Trump, repeating what most of the observers have said, acknowledges that social media networks, particularly Twitter, helped him in the successful campaigns that enabled him to win the 2016 presidential elections in the United States, he has had a long way building a brand for himself in the social media. The tweeting skills of Donald Trump have been a long time coming. He has been praised and accused, but he did not mind. Notably, Donald Trump was always aware that every publicity is good publicity(Oates, 2016). Using Twitter as a tool for political score-setting, attack as well as promotion, he eventually managed to win the presidential elections due to his ardent belief in the power of social media,one of the products of Computer science and technology.

In light of the above, it is worth considering some of the strategies applied by Donald Trump in his pursuit of building a brand for himself in the social community. The dynamics of communication in the social networks are significantly complicated. The main idea of people like Donald Trump, whose pursuit is establishing a huge followers, is looking for the best opportunities to spark a discussion that will make them trend. Trending, especially on Twitter, is one way that not only shows who you are but also increase the prominence of a person or a topic in the online community(Corea, 2015). Individuals and topics can trend for all the possible reasons. Particularly, when people trend on social media platforms, it becomes a chance for them to get more followers since more people become interested in them and following a person on social media is the surest way of ensuring that you receive their public updates the fastest way possible.

Trump seems to have understood the above dynamic of social media communication. Over the years, he has been accumulating followers on Twitter by the use of techniques that made him trend. Controversial issues are the best for the effectiveness of the above technique. The timing is also necessary. Striking a right balance between controversy and timing results to the best trending opportunity that maximizes the opportunity for the social media audience converting into followers. As indicated in the example below, Donald Trump has always been quick to notice and take advantage of such instances – and the results have been tremendous. In the year 2014, when Donald Trump was in the heights of building his Twitter brand, he majored in all sorts of controversies. For instance, during the Academy Awards that year, one of the honorable appearances was by Kim Novak who was a cinema megastar in the 1950s. Ms. Novak, who was at the time 81 years old was a near-recluse, and it had taken a lot of persuasion from her friends to attend the globally renowned and televised ceremony. As the event was happening, Donald Trump, who was following up by watching his television at home, saw Ms. Novak and disliked her appearance. As was already his norm, he expresses his feelings on Twitter by posting, “I’m having a real hard time watching. Kim should sue her plastic surgeon”(Barbaro, 2016). The above message was overly devastating to Ms. Novak who was trying to establish her way back to public life. Ms. Novak went to Oregon and refused to leave her house for days before writing an open letter to her fans, after a few weeks, calling Donald Trump a bully for his tweet.

Notably, having been a serial exploiter of all traditional media, Donald Trump experienced the painful, yet insightful, of how such openness motivates an agitated audience in the online community. He received a lot of replies for the above tweet. Some of the responses expressed disgust while others were in his support. However, the above situation helped him to gain followers nonetheless. The supporters of his open-mindedness followed as fans while those disgusted by the tweet followed him to keep track of whether he would apologize to Ms. Novak. The above example is classic exhibition of risk taking to understand the dynamics of social media. By evaluating the kind of feedback that one gets for a particular kind of message, one gets the ability to understand the mentality and expectation of the online community members(Roginsky, 2014) – who represent the most literate members of the society. The more one has further insight on various matters, from the perspective of the community, the more one creates a better rapport. Using the above strategy, Donald Trump tweeted about almost every controversial issue that was relative at a particular time. Consequently, he received feedback from the audience of his messages – who through despite either supporting or criticizing his views, followed him nonetheless(Kenneth White, 2016). Donald Trump tweeted every day; most times several times per day. In so doing, he mastered how to use Twitter in a far much better way than any other politician. For him, Twitter became his ultimate tool for all sorts of political gimmicks: attacking fellow politicians and activists, setting scores with this critics, and bringing distraction, among others.

Consequently, Donald Trump managed to set the right track and enduring platform to run his race in the games of life,particularly for his presidential campaign. About a decade ago, a couple of digital campaign strategies predicted the possibility of running for the White House office, and winning, without the use of the traditional political communication means that calls for high campaign budgets. Donald Trump, taking advantage of social media platforms’ visceral nature, materialized the above vision by using Twitter as his main communication avenue and strategy to make him the 47th president of the United States of America.

HARNESSING THE POWER OF TWITTER FOR 2016 ELECTIONS

Even way long before making his intentions to run for president public, Donald Trump had accumulated a huge follower on Twitter, using his businessman and reality television status. Consequently, in the year 2016, the Election Year, Donald Trump ended up garnering accessibility to the masses in such a huge and strategic way that his main rival, Hilary Clinton, could never manage. The election year was characterized by notable populist anger and clearly evident distrust of elites, providing the best environment for Donald Trump’s tweets to flow freely(Keith, 2016). He took the opportunity of the uncertain election environment to send frequent and loud tweets that directly took shots at his political enemies and journalistic outlets that were against his ideologies. His audience, varying from supporters, enemies, or sycophants helped to amplify his messages by retweeting them. According to an analysis carried out during the campaign period, many candidates had bot-supporters. Surprisingly, the study found out that the number of the pro-Trump bots on Twitter was seven times more than the bots dedicated to his main rival, Hilary Clinton(Kosoff, 2016). Consequently, Donald Trump, from all angles of embracing and taking advantage of the communication technology of the day, managed to develop an online authority that none of his presidential race rivals could manage.

After the election was over, the top executives at major social media networks, Twitter and Facebook, spent days downplaying the role of social media in facilitating Donald Trump’s win. However, in an interview in CBS held a few days after his dramatic victory, Donald Trump said that he acknowledged his huge followers on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, among other social networks, for his relevance that finally culminated in him winning the presidential race(Stahl, 2016). He rationalized the fact that social media helped him to win the presidency without spending as much as his main rival, Hilary Clinton, spent by using both traditional and digital campaign advertising. According to Donald Trump, the modern day communication dynamics has rendered social media stronger than any other communication channel, making his social media presence more practical than the money spent by his rivals in running other forms of communication in their campaigns(McCormick, 2016).

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• Auteur: Felix Babatunde Ale (Auteur)
• Année de publication: 2016
• Pages: 10
• N° de catalogue: V346702
• ISBN (ebook): 9783668362260
• ISBN (Livre): 9783668362277
• Langue: anglais
• mots-clé: twitter, donald trump, internet, social media