Free Media and Twitter in the 2016 Presidential Election

Abstract

This article examines the surprising outcome of the 2016 presidential election, which saw Donald Trump defy nearly all of the conventional wisdom to become the 45th president of the United States. Political commentators and experts offered several immediate postelection explanations for Trump's victory, one of which focused on how Trump was able to generate considerable unpaid or free media for himself, often directly through Twitter. This article explains the theory and rationale underlying the free media thesis (FMT) and then examines whether there is any preliminary empirical support for it. Using media tracking data and public opinion surveys, the results reveal that Trump indeed dominated the unpaid media market. Although the findings in this article cannot make causal claims about whether Trump's advantages in free media are the primary reason for his upset victory, the results, nonetheless, suggest that some of the basic conditions necessary for the FMT were present in the 2016 election and that the FMT offers a plausible avenue for further analysis and future research.

The President Is in: Public Opinion and the Presidential Use of Twitter

“…As the BBC (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38245530) has reported, in May 2009, Trump, then a private businessman, sent his first tweet promoting a forthcoming appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman. During the 2016 campaign, Trump was able to generate considerable unpaid or free media for himself, often directly through Twitter (Francia, 2017). Scholars have asserted that he successfully blurred lines between entertainment and politics, fusing "mediation, visibility and attention" and using his brand name and notoriety to become a sort of populist hero (Wells et al, 2016).…”

Estudi comparat de les posicions a Twitter dels polítics espanyols sobre el feminisme

“…For this reason, politicians prefer to use Twitter to transmit their messages, since it enables them to avoid the traditional mediating action of the media and have a more direct impact on the perceptions and opinions of citizens (Casero-Ripollés, 2010;Farrell, 2012;Zugasti and García, 2018). In fact, social media is increasingly used as a direct source of news, surpassing the traditional press (Enli, 2017;Francia, 2018).…”

The Anointed Son, The Hired Gun, and the Chai Wala: Enemies and Insults in Politicians’ Tweets in the Run-Up to the 2019 Indian General Elections

“…Narendra Modi's electoral victory in 2014 was the beginning of what some termed was a new surge of populist-nationalism in India, timed alongside the ascent of several politicians who used populist planks, including the Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte, the US' Donald Trump, and Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro. Many of these politicians were noted for their direct online outreach, often in preference to mainstream media [1] [2] [3]. Social media has become a means of unmediated outreach, freeing politicians from conventions of mainstream media discourse and allowing them to personalize their online presence and build communities around the alternative narratives of nation-hoods they proposed [6].…”