Characteristics of Tweets from @realDonaldTrump in Early 2020

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (8) ◽  
pp. 475-483
Author(s):  
Cynthia Whissell
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
First Year ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Donald Trump

This research examines the tweeting behavior of US president Donald Trump during the early crisis months of 2020. A study of 1507 tweets posted in January-April 2020, and a comparison of these to tweets from the first year of his presidency (2017) led to several statistically significant conclusions.  Overall, the language of the tweets remained somewhat positive or pleasant. Trump’s tweets were both longer and much more frequent in 2020 (the rate rose from 7 to 30 per day). The pleasantness of the language in tweets was negatively related to their popularity (popular tweets used relatively unpleasant language). The president’s tweeting behavior modified somewhat (e.g. fewer hourly tweets) in conjunction with the coronavirus crisis and the abrupt decline of the markets in March. The tweets gave evidence of a distinctly Trumpian vocabulary that favored words and phrases such as “great”, “hoax”, and “fake news media”.

Defining the Enemy: How Donald Trump Frames the News Media

2019 ◽  
Vol 97 (1) ◽  
pp. 211-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsey Meeks
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
First Year ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Conservative Media

Donald Trump has been a vocal critic of the news media. This study content analyzes how Trump tweeted about the news media as the Republican nominee through his first year in office. Results revealed that Trump privileged conservative media via praise and media appearance frames, mentions, and retweets, while denigrating nonconservative and general media via attack and bias frames. In addition, Trump employed attack frames more as president than nominee. Finally, Trump’s attack and bias frames generated more retweets and favorites than other frames. Given Trump’s influence, such framing could strongly contribute to the public’s polarized perceptions of the news media.

Summaries

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
News Production ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Hype ◽  
Insight Into

Bertijn van der Steenhoven The media coverage of fake news, a hype? This article provides insight into the intensified media attention for fake news in Dutch newspaper articles between May 2016 and April 2017 from the perspective of Vasterman’s (2005) theory of media hypes. It was found that speculations about the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States as a result of the spread of fake news caused a news wave. This news wave consists mainly of meta news and contains few news articles about the disclosure of fake news. The news production is mainly driven by meta news and by news about qualifications of the media as ‘fake news’. This article calls for further research into the media attention for fake news in other media than newspapers in the Netherlands as well as in other countries. Keywords: fake news, media hype, news wave, key event, hoax

The narrative that wasn’t: what passes for discourse in the age of Trump

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 225-241
Author(s):  
Emily R Anderson
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Political Narratives ◽  
Us Presidential Election ◽  
Discursive Power

This article considers political discourse and the role it played in the 2016 US presidential election while paying particular attention to its construction of narrative. Foucault’s understanding of discourse and power frames the argument that Donald Trump successfully abandoned political narratives. Instead, he often used idiosyncratic language, instances in which the surface of a statement outshines its content. These normally appear in Trump’s tweets and culminate in his invective against the ‘fake news’ media. In order to respond to Trump, his interlocutors must posit a premise and then refute it; in even granting that there is a premise, one must take Trump on his own terms. Trump thus disrupts the direction of traditional discursive power.

Electoral Integrity in America

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Class Group ◽  
Public Trust ◽  
Red Flags ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Electoral Fraud ◽  
State Regulations ◽  
Electoral Laws ◽  
American Elections

The contemporary era raises a series of red flags about electoral integrity in America. Problems include plummeting public trust, exacerbated by President Trump’s claims of massive electoral fraud. Confidence in the impartiality and reliability of information from the news media has eroded. And Russian meddling has astutely exploited both these vulnerabilities, heightening fears that the 2016 contest was unfair. This book brings together a first-class group of expert academics and practitioners to analyze challenges facing contemporary elections in America. Contributors analyze evidence for a series of contemporary challenges facing American elections, including the weaknesses of electoral laws, overly restrictive electoral registers, gerrymandering district boundaries, fake news, the lack of transparency, and the hodgepodge of inconsistent state regulations. The conclusion sets these issues in comparative context and draws out the broader policy lessons for improving electoral integrity and strengthening democracy.

The Architecture of Our Discontent

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yochai Benkler ◽  
Robert Faris ◽  
Hal Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Political Communication ◽  
News Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Online Media ◽  
First Year ◽  
Media Ecosystem ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Right ◽  
Integrated Media ◽  
Presidential Election Campaign

This chapter presents the book’s macrolevel findings about the architecture of political communication and the news media ecosystem in the United States from 2015 to 2018. Two million stories published during the 2016 presidential election campaign are analyzed, along with another 1.9 million stories about Donald Trump’s presidency during his first year. The chapter examines patterns of interlinking between online media sources to understand the relations of authority and credibility among publishers, as well as the media sharing practices of Twitter and Facebook users to elucidate social media attention patterns. The data and mapping reveal not only a profoundly polarized media landscape but stark asymmetry: the right is more insular, skewed towards the extreme, and set apart from the more integrated media ecosystem of the center, center-left, and left.

Epistemic Crisis

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yochai Benkler ◽  
Robert Faris ◽  
Hal Roberts
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
First Year ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Media And Politics ◽  
Social Divisions ◽  
Echo Chambers ◽  
History Of ◽  
Media Ecosystem

This chapter describes the contours of the epistemic crisis in media and politics that threatens the integrity of democratic processes, erodes trust in public institutions, and exacerbates social divisions. It lays out the centrality of partisanship, asymmetric polarization, and political radicalization in understanding the current maladies of political media. It investigates the main actors who used the asymmetric media ecosystem to influence the formation of beliefs and the propagation of disinformation in the American public sphere, and to manipulate political coverage during the election and the first year of the Trump presidency, , including “fake news” entrepreneurs/political clickbait fabricators; Russian hackers, bots, and sockpuppets; the Facebook algorithm and online echo chambers; and Cambridge Analytica. The chapter also provides definitions of propaganda and related concepts, as well as a brief intellectual history of the study of propaganda.

More than “Fake News”?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrícia Rossini ◽  
Jennifer Stromer-Galley ◽  
Ania Korsunska
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Political Elites ◽  
Fake News ◽  
The Public ◽  
Presidential Primary ◽  
The Media ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Abstract While the debate around the prevalence and potential effects of fake news has received considerable scholarly attention, less research has focused on how political elites and pundits weaponized fake news to delegitimize the media. In this study, we examine the rhetoric in 2020 U.S. presidential primary candidates Facebook advertisements. Our analysis suggests that Republican and Democratic candidates alike attack and demean the news media on several themes, including castigating them for malicious gatekeeping, for being out of touch with the views of the public, and for being a bully. Only Trump routinely attacks the news media for trafficking in falsehoods and for colluding with other interests to attack his candidacy. Our findings highlight the ways that candidates instrumentalize the news media for their own rhetorical purposes; further constructing the news media as harmful to democracy.

scholarly journals Advancing children’s news media literacy: learning from the practices and experiences of young Australians

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (5) ◽  
pp. 689-707
Author(s):  
Tanya Notley ◽  
Michael Dezuanni
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Media Literacy ◽  
News Media ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Literacy Learning ◽  
Literacy Education ◽  
Fake News ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Media Literacy Education ◽  
Nationally Representative

Social media use has redefined the production, experience and consumption of news media. These changes have made verifying and trusting news content more complicated and this has led to a number of recent flashpoints for claims and counter-claims of ‘fake news’ at critical moments during elections, natural disasters and acts of terrorism. Concerns regarding the actual and potential social impact of fake news led us to carry out the first nationally representative survey of young Australians’ news practices and experiences. Our analysis finds that while social media is one of young people’s preferred sources of news, they are not confident about spotting fake news online and many rarely or never check the source of news stories. Our findings raise important questions regarding the need for news media literacy education – both in schools and in the home. Therefore, we consider the historical development of news media literacy education and critique the relevance of dominant frameworks and pedagogies currently in use. We find that news media has become neglected in media literacy education in Australia over the past three decades, and we propose that current media literacy frameworks and pedagogies in use need to be rethought for the digital age.

scholarly journals Discursive Deflection: Accusation of “Fake News” and the Spread of Mis- and Disinformation in the Tweets of President Trump

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 205630511877601 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew S. Ross ◽  
Damian J. Rivers
Keyword(s):  
Corpus Analysis ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Hillary Clinton ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
The Public ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
Objective Truth ◽  
Reliable Source ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Reports

Twitter is increasingly being used within the sociopolitical domain as a channel through which to circulate information and opinions. Throughout the 2016 US Presidential primaries and general election campaign, a notable feature was the prolific Twitter use of Republican candidate and then nominee, Donald Trump. This use has continued since his election victory and inauguration as President. Trump’s use of Twitter has drawn criticism due to his rhetoric in relation to various issues, including Hillary Clinton, the size of the crowd in attendance at his inauguration, the policies of the former Obama administration, and immigration and foreign policy. One of the most notable features of Trump’s Twitter use has been his repeated ridicule of the mainstream media through pejorative labels such as “fake news” and “fake media.” These labels have been deployed in an attempt to deter the public from trusting media reports, many of which are critical of Trump’s presidency, and to position himself as the only reliable source of truth. However, given the contestable nature of objective truth, it can be argued that Trump himself is a serial offender in the propagation of mis- and disinformation in the same vein that he accuses the media. This article adopts a corpus analysis of Trump’s Twitter discourse to highlight his accusations of fake news and how he operates as a serial spreader of mis- and disinformation. Our data show that Trump uses these accusations to demonstrate allegiance and as a cover for his own spreading of mis- and disinformation that is framed as truth.

scholarly journals Hate in a Tweet: Exploring Internet-Based Islamophobic Discourses

Religions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giulia Evolvi
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
European Union ◽  
Qualitative Analysis ◽  
Union Membership ◽  
News Media ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Global Networks ◽  
Western Values

Islamophobia is the unfounded hostility against Muslims. While anti-Muslim feelings have been explored from many perspectives and in different settings, Internet-based Islamophobia remains under-researched. What are the characteristics of online Islamophobia? What are the differences (if any) between online and offline anti-Muslim narratives? This article seeks to answer these questions through a qualitative analysis of tweets written in the aftermath of the 2016 British referendum on European Union membership (also known as “Brexit”), which was followed by a surge of Islamophobic episodes. The analysis of the tweets suggests that online Islamophobia largely enhances offline anti-Islam discourses, involving narratives that frame Muslims as violent, backward, and unable to adapt to Western values. Islamophobic tweets also have some peculiar characteristics: they foster global networks, contain messages written by so-called “trolls” and “bots,” and contribute to the spreading of “fake news.” The article suggests that, in order to counteract online Islamophobia, it is important to take into account the networked connections among social media, news media platforms, and offline spaces.

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