Trump 2016: President Elected Thanks to Social Media?
Keywords:
Social media, Internet, Twitter, Facebook, Trump, political communicationAbstract
The Internet and social media, particularly Twitter and Facebook, have been identified as one of the factors that contributed to Donald Trump’s triumph in the United States presidential elections of 2016. In this paper, we describe how the Republican candidate used social media and what his digital strategies were, after directly monitoring the campaign and reviewing journalistic information, as well as the analysis of the academic research carried out so far. Based on this review, it is possible to conclude that social media played a significant role in these elections, expanding its power of influence as compared to the previous elections of 2008 and 2012, when Obama used them extensively, and which Trump used better than Hillary Clinton to move his priority audience, to discourage his rival’s audience, and to send his messages, thus making it an important part of his victory. It is also concluded, however, that it is wrong to say that social themselves were the main reason for the Republican candidate’s success, as there are other substantial reasons to his triumph which are linked to the socio-political context in which these elections took place.Downloads
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