Kreis, R. (2017). The "Tweet Politics" of President Trump. (Maddie)

From Digital Culture & Society

Review - Maddie Staruch

This study explored how Donald Trump utilized his public platform on Twitter to propagate his right wing political agenda. The author collected a sample of over 200 tweets that Trump authored over one month after his inauguration. The article uses the ideology of populism as a theoretical framework to approach the strategies employed by Trump’s tweets. Populism is defined by Kreis as “an ideology that focuses on the dichotomy between the people, imagined as a homogenous community, and the corrupt elite that deprives the people of their sovereign rights” (p. 609). The article attributes five main kinds of populist discourse that Trump uses in his tweets to disseminate his political message: the homogenous whole, the positioning of himself as the saviour of democracy, an ‘us versus them’ mentality, discrediting the mainstream media, and the notion of authenticity as a response in the face of organized professionalism.

The concept of the ‘homogenous whole’ was identified due to Trumps consistent reference to “the people”, “the American people” or “the nation” in his tweets (p. 612). By doing so he implies that those who he is referring to in his tweets are all in agreement and on the same side of each argument. It homogenizes the population into a conglomerate that is portrayed as all being supporters of the Trump administration. It is also identified that Trump positions himself as the saviour in the ‘us versus them’ narrative that is consistently woven throughout his communications. Whether it be against the unknown ‘other’ or the explicit targeting of certain ethnicities or religions, Kreis states that Trump only focuses on positives when referring to himself and positioning himself within certain narratives (E.g. “Big crowds of enthusiastic supporters lining the road that the FAKE NEWS media refuses to mention”). The discrediting of the mainstream media is also present in the ‘us versus them’ narrative, as Trump positions himself directly in opposition with the stories of traditional news sources; tweets construct the media as untrustworthy and deceptive while he is constructed as the pinnacle of truth and the saviour of American culture. Ultimately, it is his unconventional use of platforms like Twitter and unprofessional attitude that lead him to be represented as somehow more ‘authentic’ than the traditional political candidates, thus completing the narrative of Trump as the hero in the populist story.

As social media is on the rise, this paper provides important context that helps us understand and deconstruct the effect that mass broadcasting platforms such as Twitter are having on our social and political spheres. Especially considering the rise of people being anti-establishment, platforms like twitter “arguably offers more opportunities for politicians with a succinct and unambiguous message than for mainstream politicians whose positions are marked by more nuance and opacity” (p. 615). The article also details how platforms like Twitter allow people to get around the mainstream media and become the transmitters of their own messages.

The qualitative analysis of this essay is extremely detailed, and provides good samples of Trump’s tweets that back up the thesis of the paper. By systematically coding Trump’s tweets and then applying the theoretical framework of populism as defined by a historical approach to critical discourse analysis, there is a solid link between the arguments being made and the conclusions being demonstrated by each of the given examples. Not only are the tweets analyzed on a surface level based off of their obvious meanings, but Kreis also analyzes the thought behind language choices that are made, and identifies the effects of various ‘buzz words’ and how he uses capital letters and punctuation to give meaning and authenticity to his messages.

The biggest weakness of this paper is the data sampling. While it gives strong examples of populist discourse in Trumps tweets, the author only features seven tweets as distinct examples in the paper. While it is said that the 216 sampled tweets were coded and sorted into categories of discourse, the results of that data categorization are not explicitly stated anywhere in the paper. Therefore, the validity of the research can be brought into question as the data findings that back up the conclusions that are drawn cannot be referenced. In the future, this could be tackled by adding in a graph or chart with the mathematical structure of the tweets collected and how they fell into each specified theme that was found. While this paper is more of a qualitative analysis, it is important to provide readers with the quantitative data that allowed the author to come to the conclusions that they did.

Another weakness is that this article seems to have a bit of a bias against Trump given the last line of the paper, which states “given the new ‘travel ban’ that was issued on March 6th, 2017, we can expect to continue to see such rhetoric reflected in his policy and impacting the way politics is done” (p. 616). The language used in this sentence implies that the author has certain expectations of Trump’s behaviour, and that might have influenced the approach he took to examining the given data set of tweets.

When considering possibilities for future studies, I think it would be beneficial to look more at how various politicians use social media to disseminate their political messages. Being able to understand how their platforms are constructed and presented to the voting populations is important, as it can allow for more informed voting decisions. For example, analyzing the Twitter feeds of Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton would provide further insight into how social media are changing the landscape of politics and the way that campaigns are being run.

In conclusion, this article, while lacking access to quantitative data, still provides strong qualitative analysis to back up the thesis of the article, and provides important context to understanding the power of language that is able to be harnessed through far-reaching platforms like Twitter. Through analyzing core themes found in populist rhetoric, the paper concludes that Donald Trump’s use of Twitter suggests a new era of political dissemination; one that can be attributed to a rise in populistic approaches taken by the Trump administration, leading to a top-down focused on broadcasting messages instead of more professional and traditional interaction.

Reference Kreis, R. (2017). The "Tweet Politics" of President Trump. Journal Of Language & Politics, 16(4), 607-618. doi:10.1075/jlp.17032.kre