Blog 6: Online Presence

Donald Trump’s use of social media was unlike anything the public was used to during a presidential campaign. He used social media as a soapbox to rile up his followers as well as give those who did not support him something to talk about.

During the election Donald Trump had a campaign website, a Facebook, and an extremely active Twitter account.  Donald did a really good job of making him and his platform easily accessible regardless of the content he decided to distribute. He had email lists, text messages sent out, and his website had tons of information on his mission as a candidate. In regards to his social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter it was extremely prevalent that these platforms were most likely regulated by him and only him. His Facebook and more so his Twitter account was off the cusp and lacking in formal tone.

Some things that were positively seen in Trump’s social media usage were his ability to get strong reactions from the public and his relatable and informal tone. His tweets were largely talked about during the election, he would post emotionally charged accusations that riled up the nation all within only 140 characters. The tweets that produced the most attention were outlandish and in most cases boldfaced accusations. The public, whether in support or against his candidacy, paid attention to what Trump tweeted. He tweets magnetized all party followers just because of the sheer entertainment, which helped him dominate the conversation during the political season. Trump lacked a formal tone especially for a candidate for the presidency, but I think this actually worked to his advantage. By producing tweets that used words and phrases that were more common he was able to attract a voting block of the population because they understood and comprehended the arguments he made

When researching Donald Trump’s media I stumbled across a page, citizensfortrump.com. This page was created entirely by concerned citizens as a grassroots movement to elect Trump as the 45^th president. They refer to the need to create a ‘volunteer army’, which personally caused some concern in the verbiage they used. There are also many other pages and Facebook groups showing support for Donald. The campaign did not put out the citizens for Trump page or any of the other pages for that matter, but it was somewhat effective in gaining and attracting support for Trump, some of the group pages had hundreds of thousands of followers.

Things that could have been more effective for Trump to do on social media were he could have been more formal and less accusatory. Doing these things did attract a certain type of voter, but it also took away from his legitimacy as a candidate. He was represented as a candidate that didn’t care for others and as someone who was aggressively rude. He tweeted about Meryl Streep being a terrible actress because she criticized and undermined him, this was not an appropriate action taken by the president. He should have also checked his sources and facts before posting, he expounds rhetoric of the media putting out fake news but in reality he does the same by jumping to conclusion and posting it for all of his followers to see. As a presidential candidate I held him to higher standards to accurately report happenings and that was not the case.

Social media is something that has been slowly making more of an appearance as a relied upon source for constituents during elections. Social media has been expanding and will continue to do so. The way candidates utilize social media will be an integral piece of their campaign. Social media presence catapulted the attention Trump received from the media and he used this platform to his advantage in the 2016 presidential election. He set the pace and molded what citizens expectations are for candidates on social media. Trump forever changed future political races and went against the normalized grain which caused his success.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump

http://citizensfortrump.com/about/

http://www.journalism.org/2016/07/18/candidates-differ-in-their-use-of-social-media-to-connect-with-the-public/