scholarly journals Populist Supporters on Reddit: A Comparison of Content and Behavioral Patterns Within Publics of Supporters of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton

2021 ◽  
pp. 089443932199613
Author(s):  
Andreas Jungherr ◽  
Oliver Posegga ◽  
Jisun An
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Community Building ◽  
Activity Levels ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
Linguistic Patterns ◽  
Usage Patterns ◽  
Presidential Election Campaign

The international rise of populism has been attributed, in part, to digital media. These media allow the backers of populists to share and distribute information independent of traditional media organizations or elites and offer communication spaces in which they can support each other and strengthen communal ties irrespective of their societal standing. Can we identify these functions in distinct usage patterns of digital media by supporters of populists? This could find expression through posting content that comports with the central tenets of populist ideology, higher activity levels, use of distinct vocabularies, and heightened levels of community building. We investigate differences along these dimensions on the online forum Reddit by comparing linguistic patterns and content of comments in two subreddits focusing on a populist, Donald Trump (/r/The_Donald), and a center-left politician, Hillary Clinton (/r/hillaryclinton), during the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign. Contributors to /r/The_Donald expressed more strongly parts of the populist ideological package, specifically anti-elitism and exclusionism, but failed to express people-centrism; used the platform more intensively; used vocabularies different than those used in other partisan publics; and engaged more strongly in community building.

scholarly journals Don’t Republicans Tweet Too? Using Twitter to Assess the Consequences of Political Endorsements by Celebrities

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 144-160
Author(s):  
Jan Zilinsky ◽  
Cristian Vaccari ◽  
Jonathan Nagler ◽  
Joshua A. Tucker
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Presidential Candidate ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
Political Preferences ◽  
The Social ◽  
Decision To Stay ◽  
Presidential Election Campaign

Michael Jordan supposedly justified his decision to stay out of politics by noting that Republicans buy sneakers too. In the social media era, the name of the game for celebrities is engagement with fans. So why then do celebrities risk talking about politics on social media, which is likely to antagonize a portion of their fan base? With this question in mind, we analyze approximately 220,000 tweets from 83 celebrities who chose to endorse a presidential candidate in the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign to assess whether there is a cost—defined in terms of engagement on Twitter—for celebrities who discuss presidential candidates. We also examine whether celebrities behave similarly to other campaign surrogates in being more likely to take on the “attack dog” role by going negative more often than going positive. More specifically, we document how often celebrities of distinct political preferences tweet about Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton, and we show that followers of opinionated celebrities do not withhold engagement when entertainers become politically mobilized and do indeed often go negative. Interestingly, in some cases political content from celebrities actually turns out to be more popular than typical lifestyle tweets.

Celebrity Endorsements and Voter Emotions: Evidence From Two Experiments

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 648-672 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony J. Nownes
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Control Group ◽  
General Notion ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Factual Information ◽  
Celebrity Endorsements ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Attitudes And Behavior ◽  
Presidential Election Campaign

Here, I report the results of two randomized, posttest only, control group, survey experiments in which respondents were exposed to factual information about celebrity support for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election campaign. Based on previous research, I hypothesize that celebrity endorsements will affect the emotions of enthusiasm, anger, and anxiety vis-à-vis Secretary Clinton. My results provide support for the general notion that celebrity endorsements can affect voter emotions. Specifically, I find that celebrity endorsements profoundly decreased the negative emotions of anger and anxiety vis-à-vis Secretary Clinton. My research suggests that a broad range of stimuli may affect voter emotions, which in turn affect political attitudes and behavior.

scholarly journals Presidential campaign of Volodimir Zelensky: Usage of Donald Trump’s experience

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 698-713
Author(s):  
Vladimir E. Kosyakov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
Political Leader ◽  
Common Elements ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Counter Culture ◽  
Image Building ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One ◽  
Presidential Election Campaign

Introduction: the article contains the analysis of the unique features of Volodimir Zelensky’s presidential election campaign, the success of which is based on the image of a political leader deliberately built as totally different from the one traditional for the Ukraine’s political elite. Objectives: studying the main political trends in presidential campaigns of Volodimir Zelensky and Donald Trump, to identify common elements of their image-building strategies. Methods: comparative analysis. Results: the study verifies the effectiveness of building the counter-culture image of a political leader in the conditions of high levels of political cynicism and citizens’ distrust to their government. Conclusions: the tactics used by Donald Trump and Volodimir Zelensky during the 2016 US elections and 2019 Ukrainian elections respectively are similar at their core. The difference manifests itself in the types of political images used, as formed with respect to the candidates’ previous careers.

Goldwater After Trump

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 651-661
Author(s):  
Jacob M. Appel ◽  
Akaela Michels-Gualtieri
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Public Figures ◽  
American Psychiatry ◽  
Hand Evaluation ◽  
American Psychiatry Association ◽  
Presidential Election Campaign ◽  
Scale Challenges

AbstractThe “Goldwater rule,” a policy adopted by the American Psychiatry Association (APA) in 1973, prohibits organization members from diagnosing or offering professional opinions regarding the mental health of public figures without both first-hand evaluation and authorization. Initially developed in response to a controversial survey of APA members during the 1964 Presidential election campaign, the ethics rule faced few large scale challenges until the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Since that time, a significant number of psychiatrists have either violated or criticized the rule openly. This paper argues that whatever the initial merits of the rule, the prohibition has since been rendered obsolete by the combined lack of professional consensus supporting the policy, absence of a meaningful enforcement mechanism, and the credible statements of non-APA members in the mental health professions regarding public figures.

Losing (to) Misogynists

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Manne
Keyword(s):  
Social Psychology ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Male Counterpart ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Leadership Positions ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Protective Mechanisms ◽  
The Right

This final chapter applies the analysis of misogyny to the 2016 presidential election, in which Hillary Clinton was defeated by Donald Trump, despite the latter being vastly underqualified and temperamentally and morally unsuited to the position. There was also a great deal of misogyny directed toward Clinton not only by Trump and others on the right but also from left-wing sources. It is argued that much of this misogyny and even the outcome were to some extent predictable, on the basis of evidence of misogynistic biases against women who compete for male-dominated leadership positions. Research in social psychology shows that, when a woman cannot be judged less competent than her male counterpart in such contexts, many people will hold that, although they are equally competent, she is less likable than he is. Women are just as likely as men to reject high-achieving women in this manner, due to ego-protective mechanisms.

scholarly journals Micro-Expressions of Fear During the 2016 Presidential Campaign Trail: Their Influence on Trait Perceptions of Donald Trump

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick A. Stewart ◽  
Elena Svetieva
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Presidential Campaign ◽  
Contrast Study ◽  
Leadership Traits ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
National Convention ◽  
Acceptance Speech

The 2016 United States presidential election was exceptional for many reasons; most notably the extreme division between supporters of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. In an election that turned more upon the character traits of the candidates than their policy positions, there is reason to believe that the non-verbal performances of the candidates influenced attitudes toward the candidates. Two studies, before Election Day, experimentally tested the influence of Trump’s micro-expressions of fear during his Republican National Convention nomination acceptance speech on how viewers evaluated his key leadership traits of competence and trustworthiness. Results from Study 1, conducted 3 weeks prior to the election, indicated generally positive effects of Trump’s fear micro-expressions on his trait evaluations, particularly when viewers were first exposed to his opponent, Clinton. In contrast, Study 2, conducted 4 days before Election Day, suggests participants had at that point largely established their trait perceptions and were unaffected by the micro-expressions.

Behavior notwithstanding: Person perception and news photographs of the two leading candidates in the 2016 presidential election

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-159
Author(s):  
Nicole Smith Dahmen
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Person Perception ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Election Study ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Quantitative Content Analysis ◽  
Quantitative Content ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
Perception Theory

Applying person perception theory, this research uses quantitative content analysis to analyze 1,183 newspaper photographs of the two leading candidates from the 2016 presidential election. Study findings show that there were statistically significant differences in the photographic presentations of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the 2016 election, with Clinton pictured more favorably than Trump.

scholarly journals Social Media for Political Campaigns: An Examination of Trump’s and Clinton’s Frame Building and Its Effect on Audience Engagement

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630511985514 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdulsamad Sahly ◽  
Chun Shao ◽  
K. Hazel Kwon
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Audience Engagement ◽  
Frame Effect ◽  
Frame Building ◽  
Cross Platform

This study investigates cross-platform differences in social media by analyzing the contending candidates who represent different political ideology during the 2016 presidential election. Borrowing the frame-building and frame-effect perspectives, it examines the ways in which the two contending candidates (Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton) built their message frames in two different social platforms—Twitter ( N = 3,805) and Facebook ( N = 655)—and how the frame differences affected audience engagement in each platform. The results showed that Trump’s messages presented more variety in frame selection than Clinton’s, focusing on conflict and negative emotional frames on Twitter while displaying frequent positive emotional frames on Facebook. Clinton’s strategy relied heavily on conflict and positive emotional frames on both Twitter and Facebook. The results also suggested that for both Trump and Clinton followers on Twitter, conflict and morality frames consistently attracted retweeting behaviors and emotional frames attracted favoriting behaviors. However, Facebook engagement behaviors did not show a consistent pattern between the followers of the two candidates.

scholarly journals Analysis of Facebook Meme Groups Used During the 2016 US Presidential Election

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 205630511880879 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mia Moody-Ramirez ◽  
Andrew B Church
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Group Setting ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Political Ideas ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Facebook Pages

Using content analysis, this study examines how citizens may use memes to share grassroots political ideas in a social media group setting during elections. Specifically, it offers a glimpse at the types of meme-related Facebook pages that emerged during the 2016 presidential election with an emphasis on representations of the two front-runner candidates—Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Generally, Facebook-meme pages and profile photos of both candidates were negative in tone with Trump more likely to be framed in terms of his hairstyle and facial expressions and Clinton in terms of the email scandal and her relationships with people. Political party and gender differences between these two candidates contributed to variations in representations. Study findings are important as they offer a look at grassroots use of memes during a major election and provide a general overview of Facebook user depictions of the two politicians.

Average Joe, Crooked Hillary and the unStable Narcissist: Expert Impressions of 2016 and 2020

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Book ◽  
Beth Visser ◽  
Anthony Volk
Keyword(s):  
Personality Traits ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Psychopathic Personality ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
Average Profile ◽  
The U.S

The U.S. 2020 presidential election has, like the 2016 election, brought attention to the two candidates’ personalities. We invited HEXACO researchers to complete observer-report inventories for Joe Biden’s and Donald Trump’s public personalities. Given previous comparison of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump prior to the 2016 election, we are also able to compare the 2020 candidates to the 2016 candidates. Our ratings reveal a relatively average profile of personality traits for Joe Biden, including higher ratings than Trump for Honesty-Humility, Agreeableness, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness. Biden also scores higher on all traits than Clinton other than her slightly higher scores for Conscientiousness and Openness. In comparison to his 2016 ratings, in 2020 Trump is rated as having lower Extraversion and much lower Conscientiousness along with higher Emotionality (especially Fearfulness). Overall, our data once again suggest a Narcissistic profile for Trump, with elements of psychopathic personality traits, while Biden presents as an outgoing individual with slightly above average prosocial traits.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document