Editor

Jody C. Baumgartner; Terri L. Towner

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Description

On January 13, 2017, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump took to the social media platform Twitter to attack his recent opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Trump microblogged, “What are Hillary Clinton’s people complaining about with respect to the F.B.I. Based on the information they had she would have never been allowed to run – guilty as hell… [sic]” Aside from the obvious concerns about a president who will be appointing judicial candidates assigning guilt to a political opponent, this tweet generally illustrates the overall negative tone perceived throughout the 2016 Presidential Election campaigns and more specifically illustrates the way in which social media are revolutionizing American elections. This election cycle saw both major-party nominees with underwater favorability numbers and each candidate was dogged by scandals that called into question their character and suitability for office. With no shortage of potentially damning information on either side, Twitter became a forum for 140-character (or less) personal attacks from candidates that could be characterized as having itchy Twitter fingers. This chapter investigates candidates’ use of social media broadly as well as its use as a vehicle of negativity in this contentious election by looking across platforms. Specifically, we 2 content analyze the official candidate social media account activity in the months preceding Election Day 2016 from the three most-prominent social media platforms, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. In addition to major party candidates Donald Trump (the Republican nominee) and Hillary Clinton (the Democratic nominee), we also investigate the social media use of Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson.

ISBN

9798216246244

Publication Date

8-22-2017

Publisher

Lexington Books

City

Lanham, MD

Disciplines

American Politics

The Twitter Election: Analyzing Candidate Use of Social Media in the 2016 Presidential Campaign (Chapter from The Internet and the 2016 Presidential Campaign)

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