Differentiation in Political Communication

Project Report in Strategic Communication in an International Context I Fall 2018

Project Group: V1840164844

Group members

Eric Tomio - 64192

Samuel Walton - 64238

Hemanta Bista - 64382

Shyam Kumar Rana - 64375

Rasmus Engmann Fink - 64176

Emil Guldbrandsen - 66853

Submission date: 11-12-2018

Number of keystrokes incl. spaces: 143.798

Table of contents

Table of contents 0

Introduction 3 The concept of trade deals 4 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 4 The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) 5 US political parties’ views on trade deals prior to election campaign 6 Parties’ views on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 6 Parties’ views on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) 7 The candidates’ views on trade deals prior to election campaign 7 Clinton position 8 Trump position 9

Literature review 9

Theory 10 Valence Issues 10 Issue Ownership 11 The Rhetoric of Dominance & Dispersion 11 Strategic political communication 12 Rhetorical analysis 15

Methods 17 Research design 18 Choice of methods 19 Data sources 19 API troubles 21 The reason for mixed methods 22

Analysis 22 Text statistics 22 Speeches 25 Clinton speeches 25 Trump speeches 30 Television ads 34 Clinton ads 37 Trump ads 37 Presidential debates 41 The emotion behind US trade relations 41 Clinton: Smart and fair future deals 42 Me First 43 Portraying Trump’s Protectionism as hypocrisy 44 Tweets 45 Trump tweets 45 Hillary tweets 46

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Statements 46 Press releases 47 Facebook 49 Clinton Facebook posts 49 Trump Facebook posts 50

Discussion 51 Findings 51 Social media usage 53 Discussion of ownership 54 Limitations 55

Conclusion 57

Bibliography 58

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Introduction

Most politicians instinctively seek to differentiate their policies drastically from their political rivals on the topics that are currently seen as relevant to the public. This is done as an effort to appeal to potential voters. But sometimes fierce political rivals agree on policy goals but not process to get there. This is categorized as valence issues. For this project, we wanted to see how politicians try to differentiate themselves from their rivals on valence issues that they essentially agree on. For this purpose, we chose the US presidential campaign of 2016 between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and their similar stances on the valence issue of the international trade deals North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). We employed rhetorical analysis in relation to issue ownership theory to uncover how they appealed to the audiences while still differentiating themselves from their rival. The analysis material consisted of several different types of communication utilized by the two candidates, including traditional media and social media.

Valence issues are important because they typically dominate political discourse in national election campaigns (Clarke et al., 2011). According to the Hacker (1995), presidential candidates give speeches, make promises, shake hands, debate each other, talk in a group, pose for the camera and make proclaims such as the slogan of Donald Trump ‘We make America great again”. They compete with each other to define the most important issues, set campaign agendas and the opposing act defensively. They try to different themselves on their candidates with a special theme so voters can understand. In the 2016 presidential election, it is not surprising that the economy and international trade are valence issue.

There were numerous other valence issues as well shared between the candidates. For example opposition to terrorism, crime in the streets and other threats to national and personal security. In addition, there is also overwhelming majorities favour on high-quality health care and educational systems, safe, efficient transportation, and pollution-free environment (Clarke et al., 2011). Indeed, when Hillary and Trump discussed on trade deals, both of them have a similar opinion, which was opposed to the trade deals, even though they belong in different ideological parties.

The 2016 US Presidential election campaign was a highly competitive race for the White House (Enli, 2017, pp. 50-51). Trump and former First Lady and former Secretary of State were icons in this election. Both candidates intensely differentiated their agendas such as the economy, security, healthcare, immigration, foreign policy, trade deals, education, environment and so soon. From Lee and Xu (2018) point of view, as a candidate, Trump

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was more successful than Clinton in drawing public attention to preferred issues through Twitter. In the U.S., it is common that the Republican Party supports national defence, crime (law and order), and budgetary issues (government spending, taxing), and the Democratic Party supports the issues of civil rights, women’s rights, education, environment, and social welfare (Lee and Xu, 2018, p. 201). The slogan “we make America great again” was the main theme of Trump during the election. Political parties spend time and effort on carefully selecting what issues to talk about in the election. Generally, political parties compete in an election by strategically emphasizing the same issue policy (Klüver and Sagarzazu, 2015). It is very important for political parties to address the valence issue as well.

Klüver and Sagarzazu (2015) argue that political parties compete with each other by campaigning on different policy issues rather than by opposing each other on the same issues. Actually, there are still different opinions about how candidates will stand when the same issues are prioritized. Voters make their vote choices by evaluating the competence of political parties to handle certain policy issues. According to the Issue Ownership theory, voters identify the party that is the most competent problem-solver on an issue and cast the ballot for that party (Klüver and Sagarzazu, 2015, pp. 4-5). It is easier for voters when positional issues were articulated by candidates, instances when competing parties are pursuing differing ends. On valence issues, voters have the same ideal point and political parties have also the same perspective on an issue (Green, 2007).

The concept of trade deals

A trade deal (or trade agreement), in an international context, is a bilateral or group pact, in which two or more countries agree to facilitate the trading of goods between each other. The mechanisms of a trade deal can be preferential tax rates or lowered tariffs to encourage trading between those nations within the deal. The immediate resulting impact of a trade deal is an increase in foreign-made products being sold in one or both of the countries within the deal; as well as an increase in businesses relocating parts of the business to other countries—to capitalise on any benefits of the foreign labour market (Goldsmith, 2015).

North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

The original idea for the North American Free Trade Agreement came from the former President Ronald Reagan (Republican) to build a free-trade agreement between the US and Canada. It was then adopted by President George H.W. Bush (Republican) to include lower tariffs for trading with Mexico, prompting Canada to request a trilateral agreement. In 1992 NAFTA was signed by Bush, Mexico’s President Carlos Salinas, and Canada’s Prime

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Minister Brian Mulroney. In 1993 Bill Clinton (Democrat) made the final signature on the agreement, making it law. By 2008, all tariffs which once existed between the three countries were eliminated. The trilateral agreement allowed the signatories to compete with other global economies, such as the EU and China. (Amadeo, 2018).

Although having been promoted, by both Republican and Democratic presidents, as a route to strengthen the US economy in the face of global competition, NAFTA is not without its critics. Since the negotiations started they were at the centre of many political debates in the US, “mainly on the effectiveness of the agreement in ‘generation of jobs’ ” (Sharma, 2017, p.3). In particular, the NAFTA agreement has been one of the core parts of the presidential campaigns in the US, and a core argument in the debates between the Republican and Democrat candidates (Sharma, 2017, p.3). And after its implementation, the trade agreement has been attributed to US job losses and suppressed wages, destabilising Mexican agricultural sector and degrading their environment through intensive competitive farming—resulting in increased migration from Mexico.

On 30th November 2018, Trump signed a ratified version of NAFTA—along with Mexico and Canada, called the USMCA, it includes protectionist measures to attempt to reduce the negative side effects on US industry caused by NAFTA. (Amadeo, 2018)

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

The TPP began with a trade agreement between Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore in 2005. President George W. Bush (Republican) brought the US, in 2008, into discussions with these countries. The perceived interest of the US had the result of bringing other larger economies to the discussion. American interest in the TPP prompted Australia, Vietnam, Peru; and eventually, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, and Mexico to join the talks. President Barack Obama (Democrat) then continued discussions upon becoming US president in 2008, with the at-the-time-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton identifying the partnership as the device to lock “diplomatic, economic, strategic” (Clinton, 2018) investment in the Asia-Pacific region, and the pact begin signed by all parties in 2016.

With a total of twelve nations discussing the deal, naturally, it has taken some time to push the details of the partnership through. The regulations of the TPP, are more expensive than those of NAFTA; with regulations reaching into the more modern aspects of global industries, such as e-commerce, and labour and environmental standards.

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The terms of the partnership did not develop to the point of being accepted by the US; during the 2016 election, both the Republican and Democrat parties identified the TPP as a bad deal for US industry and employment. US President Donald Trump took the decision to withdraw the US from the TPP discussions, immediately upon beginning his presidency in 2017. Since the US’s withdrawal from the discussions, the remaining 11 nations have agreed on an amended partnership, now called the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), signed in March 2018 to come into effect on December 30, 2018. The current agreement consists mostly of a deal which rejects previous amendments made by the US, which were seen as less agreeable to the other nations within the deal. (McBride and Chatzky, 2018)

US political parties’ views on trade deals prior to the election campaign

As it is possible to notice from the previous paragraphs during the negotiations the different presidents that worked on them were both from the Republican and Democrats, but even if both parties were determinant on the implementation of both the trade agreements there were different view and critics toward them. Before going to start analyzing and exposing the theories and the results of this project is useful to draw down a fast but detailed introduction on the parties’ and candidates’ positions on free trade and trade agreements, limited at the NAFTA and TPP only, before and during the election campaign for the 2016 US presidency. In this way, it will be possible to have a major view an introduction on the way the speeches are conducted by the candidates and how they will then use the other candidate’ previous positions as a way to differentiate themselves from the other.

Parties’ views on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

Historically, the Republicans have been in favour of the free trade deals which is evident from the fact that President Ronald Reagan (Republican) was the first to pave way for free trade deals by passing the Trade and Tariff Act in 1984. The Act removed Congressional authority to change negotiating points and gave the president authority to negotiate free trade agreements. Reagan and the Canadian Prime Minister Mulroney signed the Canada- US Free Trade Agreement which was replaced by NAFTA (Amadeo, 2018). Then President George H. W. Bush (Republican) negotiated and signed the NAFTA deal in 1992 (Kessler, 2016). The labour organisations’ strong position against NAFTA weakened Democratic Party’s will to support this agreement (Llorens, 1997). President Bill Clinton (Democrat) later negotiated side agreements with Mexico concerning enforcement of labour and environmental laws in August 1993 to get the support of labour and environmental groups which are their key constituencies (Jackson,1999). In the House, NAFTA passed with 234

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votes in favour while 200 were against. 132 Republicans and 102 Democrats voted in favour of it. The Senate approved NAFTA with 61 votes for the agreement and 38 votes against it, with the backing of 34 Republicans and 27 Democrats (Kessler, 2016). It is clearly visible from this data that historically Democrats have been against free trade while the Republicans were for it.

The Parties views on any issues are more clear during the elections than at any other period as all the major candidates are trying to sell their propaganda to the voters. Every one of the major candidates in the 2000 US presidential elections, Republicans as well as Democrats, supported free trade and favoured NAFTA. Both Democratic candidates, Vice President Al Gore and former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, supported free trade (Jackson, 1999). On the Republican side too, the leading candidates George W. Bush and John McCain were strong supporters of free trade (Jackson, 1999)

On the contrary, it was criticized from all sides in the 2008 presidential campaign. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton promised to either amend or back out altogether of the trade agreement (Amadeo, 2018). Republican candidate Ron Paul wanted to abolish the agreement while only Republican nominee John McCain held onto his beliefs from his candidacy in 2000 (Amedeo, 2018).

Parties’ views on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

The Democrats view TPP as the basis for international relationships with the Asia-Pacific region while military power is emphasised by the Republicans for the region (Yong, 2016) This is clearly evident on evaluating the importance given by the different republican and democratic candidates before and during the election. Hillary Clinton helped negotiate the TPP as President Barack Obama’s Secretary of State but opposed it while running for the 2016 presidential primary elections (Ehrenfreund, 2016). It was still supported by the then President Obama and Hillary’s running mate Sen. Timothy M. Kaine. At the same time, it also divided the Republican sphere where only Trump was opposed to it while his other running mates for the 2016 presidential primary elections Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell supported the deal (Ehrenfreund, 2016).

The candidates’ views on trade deals prior to the election campaign

If during the political campaign the two candidates, Trump and Hillary, had different positions on most of the central topics, on the topic of free trade and international trade agreements the situation is different. Both were opposing the international trade agreements and wanted

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to limit the free trade as they argued that is only damaging the interest of the US. In particular, “they both oppose new and old trade agreements and both want to use domestic trade laws” (Watson, 2016).

Clinton position

The political position of Hillary Clinton on the international trade agreements is complicated and articulated and “outlined a multiplicity of idea on trade” (Donnan, 2016) and “has not a firm position on free trade” (Trapper, 2015), as she changed opinion on the major trade agreements different times. Her position regarding both trade agreements is “the most vacillating position” (Sharma, 2017, p. 5) among the presidential candidates.

Her position has started in the 1990s when her husband, Bill Clinton, was president and he worked on continuing the negotiation for the instauration of the NAFTA agreement. And when the NAFTA agreement was signed into law she was not so supportive about it, she was actually sceptical (Donnan, 2016). In fact, she distanced herself while competing with Barack Obama in the Rust Belt states for support during the Democratic Primary (Nakamura, 2015). But during a 1997 speech, she is referred to supporting the landmark pact by saying to the labour unions that “the simple fact is, nations with free-market systems do better” (Phillips, 2016). However, she then states during a 2007 CNN debate that NAFTA was a mistake “to the extent that it did not deliver on what we had hoped it would” (Phillips, 2016) putting herself in clear disagreement with the landmark pact. She

Following her opinion on the free-market system, as the citation above is referring, under the Obama presidency and as secretary of state Hillary pushed for the instauration of the TPP, if not by presiding the negotiations by promoting it during diplomatic visits or events. As an example, during a visit to Australia in 2012 she stated that TPP was “the gold standard in trade agreements” (Donnan, 2016; Phillips, 2016). Anyway, after the TPP was signed Hillary’s position on the TPP is increasing towards opposition as during an economic speech during the campaign in 2016 she stated that “I oppose [the TPP] now, I’ll oppose it after the election, and I’ll oppose it as president” (Donnan, 2016).

She rejected the TPP’s globalist philosophy in complete opposition of the position of ex- president Obama (Roberts and Felton, 2016). However, from 2010 to 2013 it is possible to list different statements on her favourable position on the TPP as the CNN is exposing (Trapper, 2015). In this way are addressed the critics that are from Trump on Hillary’ history

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and former positions on the international agreements as she’s secretly supporting the trade deals (Jacobs, 2016; Watson, 2016).

Trump position

If Hillary’s position is complex, the position of Trump on free trade and trade agreements is adamant. Trump started on taking sides back in the 1980s when he explained and exposed his position during talk shows as a guest (The Economist, 2016). As his same slogan and campaign “Make America Great Again” suggests, his core attention is on taking back the production to the US and to withdraw from the trade agreements if it will not achieve better positions. However, his position is consisting of attacking the trade agreements and the ones that were responsible, for him, to drag the US on these agreements. On NAFTA he stated that it was “the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere, but certainly ever signed in this country” (Sharma, 2017, p. 5).

Especially he considers the TPP a “total disaster” and “a rape of our country” (The Economist, 2016) and the globalization as a negative effect on the US economy (Jacobs, 2016). He also accused Hillary to be one of the responsibilities for the entry of the US in the NAFTA and accused her of her previous support of the TPP (Jacobs, 2016).

Literature review

When searching for literature on the 2016 US presidential campaign, many articles were mainly concerned with discussing the social media tendencies during the period. This includes scholars like Gunn Enli (2017) and P. L. Francia (2018). On the topic of issue ownership, the research in the field of politics often focused on efforts within party politics to viewed as the best candidate to implement the solution to valence issues. The literature describes the dynamics created within the battle over valence issues (Spoon et. al, 2014; Green-Pedersen and Mortensen, 2014; Whiteley, 2005). With (Holian, 2004) drawing issue competition and the use of rhetoric which led President Bill Clinton victory in 1993. About the literature review, we chose to focalize it on our specific field of research and specifically on the 2016 US presidential election campaign and on the differences between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. In this sense it possible to listed some researches about the rhetorical and linguistic analysis, as well as on the style, both regarding the oral and written communication of the two candidates.

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The scheme that is being shown is that there is a clear difference between Trump and Clinton. In addition, is necessary to point out that the majority of the previous researches and studies on the 2016 US presidential election have, as a principal focus of research the figure of Trump. This because his political communication varies from the other candidates of also other presidential election. As Quam and Ryshina-Pankova (2016) concluded, Trump “have a different understanding of the goal of a political speech than most mainstream politicians” (Quam and Ryshina-Pankova, 2016, p. 155) and has an “authentic style which corroborates his constructed position of an outsider” (Kreis, 2017, p. 615).

Theory

Valence Issues

According to Stokes (1963), valence issues “are those that merely involve the linking of parties with some condition that is positively or negatively valued by the electorate” (Stokes, 1963 p. 368-377). This study of rhetorical techniques applied by Trump and Hillary on the issue of the TPP and NAFTA trade deals will operate upon the basis that the initiative to renegotiate and be more critical of these international trade deals became a Valence Issue during the 2016 election. In contrast to Position Issues, in which the electorate’s opinion is divided as to whether an issue is important, should be considered by the government, or the public is divided as to the outcome they would like to see from the government’s tackling of the issue (Oxford Reference, no date)

Valence issues are issues—as in potential topics for discussion—in which the electorate is brought to consider the means by which the party intends to go about reaching the ends. Not to consider which end they desire from a political parties approach to an issue; because the ends are communicated to be the same by both parties. The evaluation, made by the voter, can only take into account whether they decide that one party’s approach to the said issue— in this case the TPP and NAFTA trade deals—will be effective enough, and if so, how effective in relation to the opposing party’s approach. But ultimately both parties are proposing to reach the same outcome, fixing the NAFTA and avoid entering the TPP.

By focusing on the candidate’s remarks on the valence issues, the NAFTA and the TPP trade deals, this study will be able to make a rhetorical analysis of an instance when two political opponents may be attempting to gain voters whilst communicating the same solution to the same issue. The study will analyse apparent differentiation in rhetoric between each party’s rhetorical communication, to find out what this indicates about each party’s strategy regarding this valence issue.

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Issue Ownership

It is important to acknowledge that—within instances of valence issues—to be viewed as the candidate who is competent to handle the issue, one party may attempt to effectively take ownership of the said issue. Parties who are not invested in the issue may have to take part in response to the parties who currently own the issue, an attempt to stay relevant to potential middle-ground voters. Valence issues, being issues in which the majority of the electorate agree, tend to be key in reaching middle-ground voters. (Spoon et al, 2013)

As Spoon, et al. (2013) put forward, valence issue is often strategically selected by a party, in an effort to draw the discussion into an arena in which they “own”. In this case, Trump was able to highlight Hillary’s previous approval of the international trade deals, a weakened starting point for Hillary to defend from. Issue ownership (Petrocik, 1996) refers, in party political settings, to instances when an issue is emphasised by one party, more than their competitor.

In response to the competing party taking ownership of an issue, other parties can respond by either; ignoring the issue, possibly choosing to emphasise the issues which they themselves own—“where they have a reputational advantage” (Spoon et al, 2013, p. 363). Or, as observed in Green-Pedersen and Mortensen (2014) literature review, take part in the discussion of the issue—owned by the opponent—in an attempt to minimise the opponent’s monopoly on the issue.

In the struggle to be viewed as the party with the ability to properly deal with the valence issue, that is the TPP and NAFTA trade deals, theoretically one party must have attempted and potentially succeeded in taking ownership of the valence issue, forcing the opponent to communicate in response to their ownership, in an attempt to regain ownership or limit the persuasive power that comes with ownership of the TPP and NAFTA valence issue (Whiteley, 2005).

The Rhetoric of Dominance & Dispersion

As Carmines states (1991,p. 75): “All successful politicians instinctively understand which issues benefit them and their party and which do not. The trick is to politicize the former and depoliticize the latter.” Thus the basic ideas of issue competition are well established. (Green-Pedersen and Mortensen, 2014). Related ideas were outlined by Symond’s (2000) analysis of offensive and defensive rhetoric.

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By identifying attempts at offence and defence strategies (Symon, 2000) among the Hillary and Trump campaign communications, this study seeks to define the strategic approach taken by both parties, to achieve sufficient differentiation from their opponent. With that, this study intends to apply rhetorical analysis to identify how rhetoric has been applied, through both textual and contextual forms (Selzer, 2004), by both parties.

The analysis will look to identify two party-responses to the issue of the NAFTA and TPP trade deals: A. Offence: A party proactively working to lower the competing party’s ownership of the issue of the NAFTA and TPP trade deals (Symon, 2000), or B. Defence: A party working to deflect blame, criticism or to avoid the issue of the NAFTA and TPP trade deals (Symon, 2000)

And, through the degree to which position A or B are adopted by each party, come to a conclusion as to how much each party perceived the NAFTA and TPP issues to be of benefit to their campaign, and of importance to their potential electorate (Carmines 1991,p. 75)

By analysing the content of the debate over the NAFTA and TPP trade-deals, across various direct sources of communicated political policy, this study looks to form a conclusion, based upon the how both parties chose to construct their communications in regard to the NAFTA and TPP trade-deals. This study aims to identify instances of strategic differentiation in both party’s communication, looking for the use of rhetoric which denotes attempts at dominance and dispersion in each party’s rhetorical communications.

Strategic political communication

In the analysis of the political communication used during the election campaign, it is useful to introduce the strategic political communication concept as a tool to understand more the procedures used by candidates for gathering major attention by the voters. The following explanation of the strategic political communication concept is based on the article of Strömbäck and Kiousis (2017). As the same authors mention in the very beginning of the introduction the strategic political communication theory is fragmented and is expanding by a new set of theory-based researches. Anyway, the reason to cite and expose this theory is not to expand the current state of the theory nor to analyze in a critical manner the present literature. The scope for this paragraph is to try to examine and describe the election campaign for the presidency using the trends listed in Strömbäck and Kiousis (2017, p. 121)

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and that represent the actual trends that it’s possible to encounter by analysis of an election campaign.

In general, strategic political communication “is about organizations’ purposeful management of information and communication to reach political objectives” (Strömbäck and Kiousis, 2014, p. 111). This means that the scope of a research in this field is to examine and analyze how the political parties organize their political communication to reach their strategic goal, that is “to maximize political support” (Strömbäck and Kiousis, 2014, p. 111). To reach this goal the political parties have to act inside different arenas. Following the Sjöblom’ s theory of strategic party behaviour, it is possible to identify these different areas, namely electoral, internal and parliamentary.

To achieve the primary goal of maximum political support, parties need to act strategically. To achieve this it is necessary to communicate inside the arena with a number of public or stakeholders. And for communicating as effectively as possible there is the need, for the political parties, to take into consideration the several different streams of communication to reach the different stakeholders in the different arenas. One of the most central arena that we are taking into consideration in this research is the media arena. In this arena, the candidate or political party has to deliver the message to the audience by the use of the mass media, and as it is mentioned by “comparing different media, the mass media occupy a central position” (Strömbäck and Kiousis, 2014, p. 113). There is to consider that there is a new development of the digital media and at the moment it could be possible to say that the ‘new media’, namely the digital and social media, occupy a more central position than ever before, but without replacing the old media, as television or newspaper (Enli, 2017, p. 51).

For analyzing the presidential election of 2016 in the US, the trends of the contemporary election campaign communication are a useful tool to understand the characteristics of the election campaign. About the mass media it is possible to notice that the first, and central for this research, trends are inside the media arena. In particular, Strömbäck and Kiousis explain that by analyzing the previous literature on the political communication in election campaign is possible to notice that the television as a media is still used television-centred making the political communication ‘heavily television-centred’ even though the internet has become increasingly important, as it possible to notice especially in this presidential election where the use of the social media played a more than central role.

And for what regards the use of the new media, i.e. social media, in particular, the use that Hillary and Trump have made of it is exemplificative for understand how the use of these

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new media is changing the presidential election and how big is the development of it. In “Twitter as arena for the authentic outsider” (2017), Enli cites the example of the tweet where Hillary launch her presidential campaign or the tweet of Trump where he addressed and criticized the New York Times (Enli, 2017, p. 53). This demonstrates that during the political campaign the candidates use the social media with more frequency and use it by spread important and core messages.

Regarding the role of the candidates and the political parties during an election campaign, it is possible to notice that one new trend is the increasing importance of the individual candidates or party leaders. Especially for what regards the media coverage the preference is to focus on only one figure rather than to a general political party. This trend is possible to notice in the focus that the central figure of Trump and Hillary played during the election campaign, where their figures were usually more important and more follows than the political party they were the candidates.

Following the importance of the media arena, in the political campaign, there is the consequence of audience fragmentation that is caused by the “ever-expanding media environment and increasing media choice” (Strömbäck and Kiousis, 2014, p. 122). This means that the individual preferences and motivations have a stronger impact on media use but is become more difficult to reach out the specific groups that are not interested in the political field or are not interested about the political view of a determined political party or candidate. This lead to the increasing importance of the strategy of microtargeting and narrowcasting. The first “is to identify as many voter segments as possible that can be distinguished from other voter segments and that internally are as homogenous as possible” (Strömbäck and Kiousis, 2014, p. 122) meanwhile the second is a direct consequence of the audience fragmentation and of the expanding media environment, as “the more media there are, the more individual preferences predict what type of media and media content people expose themselves to, the more homogenous audiences for different kinds of media and media content has become” (Strömbäck and Kiousis, 2014, p. 122).

As a solution and consequence of this fragmentation and high development of the media environment, there is an increase in the process of professionalization (Strömbäck and Kiousis, 2014, p. 123). But meanwhile, Strömbäck and Kiousis focus only on the trend of the increase of professionalization and on the process of professionalism, Enli exposes that during the election campaign is indeed present a process of professionalization but is confronted by the process of amateurism. In more details, if Hillary’s social media activity

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confirms the theories regarding professionalization, Trump is demonstrating the opposite by an use more amateurish of his social media activity (Enli, 2017, pp. 54-56).

Rhetorical analysis

Rhetoric was developed in ancient Greece and Rome, and originally referred to the skill of effective communication, which implies a focus on the production of communication. However, in this project rhetorical theory is relevant for its interpretative aspect in how to understand existing communication. Rhetorical analysis is mainly concerned with the study of persuasion, understood in a broad sense of how others can be influenced through communication and language (Larsen, 2015, p. 650). It is also applicable to a wide array of symbolic action such as television shows, speeches, advertisement, songs, images etc. It can be argued that all of these are able to make an argument. The rhetorical analysis allows you to objectively uncover the tactics behind certain messages and the way that language is being manipulated to persuade (Selzer, 2004, pp. 280-282).

Rhetorical analysis has many iterations which can usually be placed on a continuum between textual analysis at one end and contextual analysis at the other end. When the analysis leans more towards textual analysis, then the text1 is more demarcated to its own self-contained unit (Selzer, 2004, p. 283). In contrast, when doing contextual analysis, the ‘universe’ around the text also needs to be taken into consideration. This could be the specific year the text was produced, who the actual audience ended up being, or the political climate of the time. Contextual analysis is used to understand communication through time and space, not to be detached from it. With a contextual approach, communication is understood as ongoing ‘conversations’ and reflects the values of those engaged in the conversation. The conversation did not necessarily begin with its current actors, but they might be preceded by a long chain of exchanges (Selzer, 2004, p. 292).

For this reason, contextual analysis can be quite time-consuming to get into, if you are not already immersed into the social circumstances (Selzer, 2004, p. 294), but it is necessary if you want to catch for an example subtle allusion in the text to other pieces of communication relevant to a debate. The importance of the context of the text also often leads to less focus on the sender’s individual rhetorical prowess, as with textual analysis, but instead recognizes that a specific text might be representative of a community and its values rather than just the individual who produced it (Selzer, 2004, pp. 297-301). This is not to say that aside must

1 In this section the word ’text’ does not necessarily refer to an actual text, but a term we have chosen to use for the ease of understanding. It refers to all kinds of symbolic action where rhetorical analysis can be applied.

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picked, since it could often beneficial to apply textual and contextual analysis and allow them to complement each other.

It is important to grasp rhetorical concepts that can be applied to the text. One of these is the audience, which can refer to actual listeners/readers, imagined readers in the mind of the sender, or audience within the text. Different audiences require different rhetorical approaches for the chance of persuasive success. Classic examples of this are the forensic approach that focuses on actions in the past in relation to guilt and innocence, the deliberative approach where the aim is to make changes in the future ex in legislation, or the epideictic approach that praises or criticizes something or someone in the present, which is often tied to ceremonial communication (Winton, 2012, p. 160).

To persuade, the sender needs to know what the audience can accept as probable, i.e. he has to communicate in a form consistent with stereotypical forms of thought of the members of the audience (Larsen, 2015, p. 651). Many rhetorical concepts used today have ancient origins such as Aristotle’s three modes of appeal and the five canons of rhetoric. The three modes of appeal are ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos refers to ethical appeal or credibility, pathos is an emotional appeal, and logos is an appeal to reason. When trying to assess the different appeals being employed it is also important to consider the genre of the form of communication. Some genres are tied to certain kinds of appeal, say academic texts are expected to appeal almost exclusively to the reason of the recipient rather than their feelings, while poetry should do the opposite (Nørreklit, 2003, p. 595).

The five canons of rhetoric refer to the actions of the communicator. They are invention, disposition, style, memory, and delivery. First, the invention is the creation and analysis of arguments. Second, disposition refers to the purposeful arrangement of information (Winton, 2012, p. 160). Third, style is a bit less straightforward and can refer to the use of several tools such as irony, metaphors, metonymy (something standing for something other), humour, hyperbole, and general choice of words (Selzer, 2004, pp. 283-284). With careful attention to stylistic choices when communicating “A flat statement of facts can be transformed into a strong, colourful, and convincing message” (Larsen, 2015, p. 651). Fourth is a memory and has traditionally understood how well a speaker could remember a speech. Fifth and the last canon is delivery which is tied to the voice of the speaker and how she utilizes it (Winton, 2012, p. 160).

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However, since ancient times the object of rhetoric has generally moved from oral to written communication, which is why some parts of the systems above, like memorization and delivery from the five canons, are often not utilized to the same extent in rhetorical analysis anymore and has continued to diminish in importance. An exception is a style, and in the extension of that metaphors, which from the 20th century and onwards has experienced an invigorated interest (Larsen, 2015, pp. 651-652). It has been argued that some of the canons are not ‘dead’ but instead has been reinterpreted, where for an example the canon for some has come to mean the use of referring to shared cultural memories (Winton, 2012, p. 160).

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Methods

Research design

The research of the project has been carried out in several steps and aimed to employ mixed methods. The first step was data scraping from all the sources we found relevant and were direct communication by or on behalf of the two presidential candidates from the period 26-07-2016 to 8-11-2016. These were transcripts of debates, transcripts of speeches, Facebook posts, tweets, transcripts of the television advertisements, campaign press releases, and candidate statements. The tools used for the scrapping was Netvizz for Facebook content, while NCapture was used for the rest of the sources.

The second step was to import all the scraped data into NVivo and divide it into folders for each data source separate for each candidate. This then allowed us to produce descriptive statistics for the candidates’ communication platform usage. Nvivo was then used to search for words within the dataset to pinpoint sections where the candidates expressed their opinions on the topic of NAFTA, TPP or international trade deals in general.

Third, we focused on the quantitative part of our analysis. Here the communication platform usage of the candidates was compared to expose potential tendencies towards specific platforms. In addition to this, we did a comparison of the frequency in which the candidates used our chosen search words based on our dataset and whether there was a difference from one platform to another.

Fourth, we moved on to the qualitative part of the analysis where we used rhetorical analysis on relevant sections found by the NVivo word search. The goal of this was to see if the candidates employed consistent persuasion strategies, and which rhetorical devices they used in the communication on the topic of international trade deals. The sections were

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coded in relation to the specific search words using NVivos node function.

Fifth and last step was to discuss our findings in relation to the theories presented earlier in this project and conclude on their applicability to this specific case.

Choice of methods

In this project, mixed methods have been employed. The quantitative aspect of the mixed methods will primarily come from text analysis, i.e. analysis of occurrence frequency of keywords and sentences that are thematically tied to international trade. The words were: “NAFTA”, “North American Free Trade Agreement”, “TPP”, and “Trans-Pacific Partnership” with settings for exact matches. In addition to this, we also searched for the following words including stem-words: “trade”, “deal”, “agreement”, and “international” to catch implicit mentions of TPP and NAFTA.

The analysis tools that we utilized was NVivo, which is a software that supports qualitative and mixed methods research but also capable of doing text and pattern analysis (Houghton et al., 2017). After relevant sections or paragraphs was found in the data, then rhetorical analysis was applied which represents the qualitative part of the analysis. The approach to rhetorical analysis will generally be in line with the earlier section on the topic.

Data sources

Most of the data used in the analysis has been collected through the browser extension NCapture which allows you to generate searchable PDF files that can be imported to NVivo (Hays and Daker-White, 2015, p. 3). One of the exceptions is the Facebook posts, where the Facebook-integrated app Netvizz (Subirats et al., 2018) has been used to collect posts and convert them into Excel sheets compatible with NVivo.

As already exposed above, all sources of data used for the analysis was limited to the period the 26-07-2016 till 8-11-2016. The reason for this time-frame is that Donald Trump was declared official presidential nominee by the Republican Party on the 19th of July 2016, and Hillary Clinton became official presidential nominee for the Democrats on the 26th the same month, while the 8th of November 2016 was the date that the presidential election was concluded. This is a way to both limits the amount of data that we need to analyse to a manageable level, but also a way to avoid having to take in-party rivalries into account in our analysis of communicative differentiation. Another way we limited the amount of analysis was that we focused on analysing sections in the data sources where references to our topic

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were found when searching through NVivo. This was a way to be able to cover a wider range of data sources, but this leaves the risk of missing arguments being built up through earlier comments in the specific piece of communication like speeches.

The data we have analysed is a single-directional direct communication from the candidates or between the two (presidential debates). This is understood as textual communication where international trade was on the agenda, but also communication where the topic was just briefly mentioned. It covers transcripts of debates, transcripts of speeches, Facebook posts and tweets from the candidates, transcripts of television advertisement produced by the campaigns, campaign press releases, and candidate statements. All data sources that are not social media or advertisement has been collected from the archive of The American Presidency Project which is a non-profit and non-partisan leading source of presidential documents on the internet and is hosted at the University of California, Santa Barbara (available at https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/). The campaign advertisement was collected from The New Republic’s 2016 Campaign Ad Archive (available at https://newrepublic.com/political-ad-database).

The dataset ended up consisting of 556 Facebook posts, where 289 were posted by Clinton, and 267 were posted by Trump; a total count of speeches were 102, with Trump heavily outnumbering Clinton with 65 speeches to 37 by Clinton; 3 presidential debates; 31 tweets, with 11 tweets by Clinton and 20 by Trump2; six video adverts3, three from each candidate, where trade, NAFTA and TPP was mentioned; 41 statements by Clinton; 70 press releases by the Clinton campaign team.

Facebook Tweets Speeches Television Press Statements Debates posts ads releases

Trump 267 20 65 3 0 0 3

Clinton 289 11 37 3 70 41 3

Total 556 31 102 6 70 41 3

2 see explanation for the small number of tweets in section below ‘API troubles’ 3 Selection of relevant video ads was done without the use of NVivo, which is the reasoned for the low number of videos in the dataset - only the ones deemed relevant after an initial glance has been added

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The communication platforms diversity has not been 1:1 for the candidates, where some platforms only have been used by one of the candidates and vice versa. For the social media posts, we know that many of them include video, image or sound content, but we have chosen to mainly look at the textual content in posts that explicitly mentions international trade. This, of course, comes with the risk of missing references to international trade deals etc. in videos or sound clips that are not accompanied by text that reveals this is the case. The reason for this is time restraint since it would take up too much of our limited manpower compared to analysis of the text that can be done instantaneously by computer.

API troubles

The data collection had some bumps along the road, especially data collection Twitter turned out to be problematic. Ideally, we wanted to collect all tweets from both candidates from the period 26-07-2016 to 8-11-2016 with NCapture, import the data to NVivo, and then do a word search and coding for all our chosen data sources in one go. This was not possible because of Twitter’s API. API is an abbreviation of Application Program Interface where raw data of social media services are accessible through applications such as NCapture coded specifically to harvest the data and create readable outputs (Hart et al., 2018, p. 2196).

Fully public APIs are not common for social media platforms, and the degree of restriction is different from one platform to another. For Twitter, full access is only available if you send in an application for the purpose directly to the company and get it approved. Data collection without full access on Twitter is known to especially affect the access to older content (Littmann et al., 2018, p. 23), which is exactly the kind of data we aimed to collect. In our case, the oldest tweets we were able to collect were only a year old (November 2017). This was the case for both the Clinton (@HillaryClinton) and the Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Twitter accounts.

The solution we found was to use Twitter’s own Advanced Search feature to access older posts and then collect them page-by-page as screenshots for later import to NVivo. To collect all tweets in this fashion would be an enormous task based on the sheer number of tweets by the candidates during the selected period, Trump’s one-day record was 87 tweets, while Clinton’s was 78 tweets (Keegan 2017). For this reason, we chose to do the word search directly through Twitter Advanced Search to save time, even though it is not ideal since potential word search alterations later would require a full repetition of the data

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collection process. We are aware that there might be smarter ways to circumvent this problem out there, but we were not able to find a more elegant solution on our own.

The reason for mixed methods

Our hopes with the use of mixed methods were that the quantitative analysis would prove to support the qualitative analysis by helping to locate important Tweets, Facebook updates, and parts of speech and debate transcripts etc. more effectively. This allowed us to save valuable time and bettered our chances of not missing textual quotes and comments in our dataset that were crucial to our analysis. For the contextual rhetorical analysis, we will also bring in several other data sources that are not a part of the word searched dataset but will help us to understand the social circumstances around certain pieces of communication by the candidates. This includes journalistic articles, news reports etc.

Analysis The analysis will apply both Textual and Contextual Rhetorical Analysis. Contextual, to take into account Hillary’s legacy with trade deals and to account for Trump's referral to her legacy with trade deals. And will include Textual Rhetorical Analysis, to draw on the differences in style and textual tactics used by each party.

Text statistics

NVivo can provide you with different kinds of descriptive statistics of your source material. First, we did a word frequency search to view to which extent the candidates used the words we have chosen to relate to international trade deals, NAFTA and TPP. The presidential debates were not included in this part of the analysis because both candidates were represented in the same data source. The results are shown below.

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Search words Twitter Facebook Speeches Television Press Statements ads releases

Trade, deal, 21 11 697 6 Not used Not used agreement, international

Trump NAFTA 5 2 123 1 Not used Not used

TPP 5 1 80 0 Not used Not used

Trade, deal, 13 0 70 0 72 23 agreement, international Clinton

NAFTA 0 0 0 0 0 0

TPP 0 0 5 0 0 1

Generally, Trump made explicit references to TPP and NAFTA way more often than Clinton, with a preference given to NAFTA. This is despite the fact that Clinton had more data sources represented in the data set in total. For the implicit search words (trade, deal, agreement, international) there is also a very big difference between the usage of the words chosen. Here it is important to remember that we also searched for stem-words and not exclusively exact matches for these words. This lead to a lot of results that did not reference to TPP or NAFTA, where a common example was the word “deal” referring to deals such as the Nuclear negotiation with Iran. Therefore the actual number of relevant reference proved to be much lower after manually checking the relevance of the implicit search word results. Another argument that is possible to enouce from these results is the lack, in Hillary, of explicit reference to NAFTA and TPP even though she was inside the official negotiations and took, at least regarding public support, an active role on them.

A general word frequency analysis was also applied to the candidates’ communication outputs. Words with three characters or less were filtered out to avoid too many The results are shown in the word clouds below.

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Trump word cloud

Clinton word cloud

Some of the most common words for both candidates were the names of their rivals, although with a slight difference in Clinton referring to Trump more often (“Trump” was her most used word). Even though trade deals were hot topics during the election campaigns of 2016, the words “NAFTA” or “TPP” did not make it into the candidates top 100 words used. However for Trump “Mexico” which is often portrayed as the main threat in discussions about NAFTA. Other popular words for Trump was: American, jobs, and country. For Clinton, the same words were also popular, except that she did not use ”jobs” to the same extent.

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“The vital thing in rhetorical communication is the meaning that is to be stimulated in the mind of the receiver”—not the meaning which is known to the communicator as, in rhetorical communication, the intended interpretation can differ from what the communicator is actually thinking (McCroskey, 1997, p.31). McCroskey also adds “meanings are within people, not in words”, (McCroskey, 1997, p.33) further emphasising the importance of the potential interpretations, for which, the audience to arrive.

This study considers the intended audience as those who the Trump and Hillary campaigns, respectively, identify citizens who will potentially vote in either favour. Thus it can be denoted that both campaigns will only communicate about issues which they have decided are important, to some extent, to their target voter segments. Following this, the frequency and enthusiasm in which each campaign refers to the subject of trade deals denotes how much both parties consider trade deals to be of importance to their voters.

Speeches

Clinton speeches

In Hillary Clinton’s speeches, the word search only resulted in ‘hits’ in four speeches out of her 37 speeches in total. The paragraphs where the search words were present showed to be only very limited sections of the speeches’ full bodies. From the two specific trade deals we chose to focus on, TPP is the only one mentioned explicitly (twice). These two cases are her Clinton’s remarks at Martin Luther King, Jr. Plaza on October 3rd in Toledo, Ohio, and at Ohio State University on October 10th in Columbus, Ohio. Both speeches are very close to each other in date and location.

Toledo In the speech from Toledo, TPP is only mentioned in a single paragraph in a six-page speech transcript, which makes it clear that Clinton did not intend to have trade deals the main agenda in front of this specific crowd. Immediately before this paragraph, Clinton discussed consumer protection in relation to major fraud scandals like the Wells Fargo case, where Wells Fargo employees exploited their customers to create fake accounts without their consent (Wiener-Bronner, 2018). Clinton vilifies big corporations for scamming ordinary people, ”people like you and me”, and avoiding normal persecution procedures by adding fine print details in contracts (Peters & Woolley, 2016, S14, p. 5).

4 “S” refers to speech number, see speech references in appendix

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Clinton proceeds to use Wells Fargo as an analogy for the TPP, where she points out that the similarities between the two cases lie with the faveolization of big corporations, as she perceives it. This is also her main argument for being against the TPP, which she clearly states that she is. She claims that international trade agreements like the TPP creates a dichotomy where it is the big corporations against everybody else, and Clinton is on the side of the people, the American workers: “It sets up a dispute resolution system that favours large corporations over everyone else. It's one of the reasons I'm against it” (Peters & Woolley, 2016, S1, p. 5). She does however not expand or explain the actual specifics of her claim and does not back it up by any facts. By focusing on the ‘unfairness’ of the deal, she makes an ethical appeal to the audience.

Clinton also plays heavily on consistency, where she highlights her own multiple efforts to warn people about the dangers of the TPP in the past and at the same time declares that she will be unwavering on this stance in the future “I've warned about this for years, I've written about it, and I oppose TPP now, I will oppose it after the election, I will oppose it as president” (Peters & Woolley, 2016, S1, p. 5). This contrasts the repeated criticism from Trump, where he several times during the campaign attacked Clinton for being inconsistent in her stance on international trade deals (Calmes, 2017).

Columbus In the second speech with explicit mentions of TPP, the one at Ohio State University, Clinton brings up the Wells Fargo scandal again in the paragraphs that precede section where she spoke about TPP, but in this case she does not use it as an instrument to build dichotomies that can be carried into the trade deal discussion. Instead seeks to flatter the audience by praising their senator, Sherrod Brown, for his take on trade deals, a man who is in office because the Ohio voters chose him, implying good judgement by the members of the audience who voted for Brown (Peters & Woolley, 2016, S2, p. 4).

Opposite to the speech in Toledo, Clinton speaks about trade deals in a more positive manner by stating that Sherrod Brown understands how to trade deals should be, opening the possibility that international trade deals can be beneficial for the US if they are formulated the correct way. In addition to this, she also presents her argument in a way that appeals to the audience’s logic. It is only reasonable to be open to international trade deals like the TPP when “We're only 5 per cent of the population of the world. We've got to trade with the other 95 per cent” (Peters & Woolley, 2016, S2, p. 4).

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Clinton then goes on to bring up past achievements to cement her status as a politician who is talented in dealing with foreign affairs and international trade. She has the competence to do the job and fixing the issues (Rank, 1980, p. 39). This is done by first reminding the audience that she has experience in one of the most prestigious positions in US politics – in contrast to Trump who is a complete newcomer. On top of her experience she also proves her success, as a part of a team implied by the ‘we’, in dealing with international trade while being in office:

“When I was Secretary of State, we really bore down on this, and we increased American exports 30 percent, and in particular, 50 percent to China, because we stood behind every American business. We helped them knock down every barrier so that they could get into those markets and sell” (Peters & Woolley, 2016, p. 4).

This is a feat that Clinton is certain she can replicate if she makes it all the way to the Oval Office. She gives this claim legitimacy by providing the audience with an actual plan how to improve upon trade deals that the US is already a member of. Additional legal staff would be employed to monitor the other trade deal members to avoid one-sided exploitation of US resources (Peters & Woolley, 2016, S2, p. 4). In this case, Clinton really takes ownership of the trade deal issue by proving her competence to fix the current issues.

This leads into Clinton reusing vilification as a rhetorical strategy. Vilification is an effective strategy because pointing out an ‘enemy’ gives a rallying point for the audience, a moral justification for political measures to be taken later, and provides a simplified cause to an existing problem. In addition to this, it also provides an external scapegoat instead of admitting that internal mistakes might also carry some of the responsibility for the creation of the problem (Mackey-Kallis and Hahn, 1994, pp. 4-5).

Different from the speech in Toledo, Clinton did not vilify large corporations or reified versions of trade deals. Instead, the enemy is the other members of trade deals and trade partners in general. Especially China is criticized for the application of tariffs on goods, which Clinton considers unfair. Her specific choice of words implies that trading with China always includes some more or less shady aspects that potentially exploit the US economically: “They [read: China] have tried to slap unfair tariffs and prevent American companies from doing business without having to pay some kind of big fine or make some big deal” (Peters & Woolley, 2016, S2, p. 4). Hillary uses China as an example of a scenario that could potentially happen by the hands of any other co-member of a trade deal. For this reason, the US must approach trade deals with caution but not a total rejection of the idea.

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Clinton’s judgement of the TPP in Columbus was presented in a fashion that made her critique of it seem like an objective truth instead of her own personal opinion. The TPP is examined through the lens of three criteria that the audience should be able to recognize as purely beneficial: the creation of American jobs, rise in American incomes, and improvement of American national security. A good trade deal fulfils those criteria, while Clinton concludes that the TPP fails to do so. Here Clinton makes truth claims (Symon, 2000, p. 480) but does so without backing it up with any statistic facts that support her analysis of the TPP, which could potentially make her claims seem hollow.

Clinton’s stance on the TPP has not been very consistent, as covered earlier in this project. This might be the reason why seemingly tried to downplay her own issues with consistency. She says about the TPP that “Once it was finally negotiated, I don't think it will do what I want it to do, so I oppose it” (Peters & Woolley, 2016, S2,p. 4). This gives the audience the impression that the final product was vastly different from what was promised during the negotiation process. This would make it acceptable for Clinton to change her original stance without ruining her own credibility since she did not get what she ‘paid for’. In this way, she creates the opportunity for herself to oppose specific trade deals and still represent an ideology that supports open markets.

The switch from a negative to a more positive rhetorical approach to international trade deals, seen when comparing the Toledo speech to the Columbus speech, might be explained by the context in which the speeches were delivered. The stage in Toledo was a bus and train station which was open to the public and therefore accessible to members from all the social layers of the community. In contrast to this, the speech in Columbus was at the Ohio State University, where the audience probably was much more homogenous with an expected majority of academics and students. Here the positive approach to trade deals could be explained by Clinton being aware of the connection higher levels of education has in several cases been linked to more liberal political opinions, including social issues, economic issues and trade (Levernier and Barilla, 2006).

Nominee acceptance speech The briefest reference Clinton makes to trade deals is found in her acceptance speech for the nomination as presidential candidate for the Democrats on the 28th of July 2016 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is only one short paragraph where she, as in earlier examples, promises to reject unfair trade and vilifies China. She calls out to support home-grown manufacturers with a focus on steelworkers and car producers instead of importing from

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abroad (Peters & Woolley, 2016, S3, p. 5). To refer specifically to these industries in Pennsylvania is a very sensible choice since the state has a long history as one of the country’s main producers of steel. Trump employed similar tactics to sway the Pennsylvanian voters (Margolis, 2018).

Akron The final reference by Clinton is more related to international trade in general rather than NAFTA or TPP. We do however still consider it relevant because Clinton focuses on a topic that is directly at odds with Trump’s stance on both NAFTA and TPP. The speech is from the 3rd October 2016 in Akron, Ohio.

In the examples provided earlier Clinton generally used more defensive rhetoric to defend herself against some of the most common criticism from the Trump camp without explicitly mentioning Trump. This is not the case in this speech, where Clinton takes a far more offensive approach to undermine Trump (Symon, 2000, p. 480). She calls Trump out for being a hypocrite after a story was brought about recent Trump construction work involved the use of Chinese steel and aluminium instead of using American materials produced by members of hardworking American families.

Hillary questions the ethical nature of his candidacy by explicitly mocking his official campaign slogan “How can he make America great again when he won't even buy American products in our country?” (Peters & Woolley, 2016, S4, p. 3). Could a president who hails protectionism and closed borders, but still buys cheap materials abroad to save costs for his own personal business be trusted to have the best intentions in mind for the American people? Clinton’s strategy here is to focus her attacks on the person Donald Trump rather than his specific policies. If she convinces the audience to perceive Trump as untrustworthy, then Trump’s actual competence as a politician would be negated in the minds of the audience (Rank, 1980, p. 40). Clinton then proceeds to highlight her own competence in a similar fashion to the speech in Columbus. She makes references to her own past as a successful Secretary of State and her fights against trade abuses (Peters & Woolley, 2016, S4, p. 3).

When looking at the examples presented above, Hillary Clinton does not seem very consistent in her rhetorical approach to international trade deals, like the TPP. In some examples, she speaks of the topic as something that is inherently bad for the US and the American citizens, while she praises the concept of free trade in a separate speech. She is however fairly consistent in her form of appeal, where she mainly appeals to the audiences

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through logic and by references to her own credibility and experience. In most cases, Clinton employed rhetorical vilification, although with changing perceptions of the ‘enemy’, including large corporations, reified trade deals, other nations, and Trump. On the offensive-defensive rhetoric continuum, Clinton leans more to the defensive side, exemplified by her efforts to challenge the criticism on consistency she has been accused of in relation to trade deals.

Trump speeches

Donald Trump mentioned NAFTA and TPP very often in his speeches during the campaign, NAFTA more than TPP. This is done explicitly and to a much higher extent than Clinton. Because of this abundance of references the analysis of Trump’s speeches will be divided into recurring themes rather than done on a speech by speech basis. During the analysis, it became apparent that Donald Trump often reused his speech scripts around the country, often word for word.

Crooked Clinton Compared to Clinton, Trump was much more one-sided in his tactics when choosing to be offensive or defensive in his rhetoric. He focused on undermining his rival instead of spending time on defending his own accounts (Symon, 2000, p. 480). One of his most used narratives was that of “crooked Clinton”. In these cases, his appeal to the audience was heavily ethical, but in an indirect way. Trump often tried to portray Clinton’s actions as immoral, in some cases even illegal, to then bolster his own ethical appeal in the light of Clinton’s perceived lack of it. This is a clear example of presenting his argument in a forensic manner where he is very occupied with the question of guilt in relation to innocence (himself).

One of Trump’s main arguments to prove this was to repeatedly refer to Clinton as controlled by her donors. In relation to trade deals she “supported NAFTA, she supported China's entry into the World Trade Organization, and she supported the TPP. She just does whatever her donors tell her to do” (Peters and Woolley, S5, 2016, p. 1). He implies that her support for international trade deals has nothing to do with what is best for America but just what is best for Clinton’s own wallet. In addition to accusations of greed, rhetoric like this also questions Clinton’s integrity, as she allows herself to be puppeteered by others (Rank, 1980, p. 40).

To support his claims, Trump often brought up campaign donations figures where highlighted the sources of the donations. He tried to connect as many donations as possible

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to people, organizations or nations that are lobbying for the TPP (Peters and Woolley, S6, 2016, p. 1). In addition to economic figures, he also makes truth claims about Clinton’s alleged donor affiliations, where the audience is expected to take his statements as facts (Quam et al., 2016, p. 144). An example of this is at Trump’s speech at the Economic Club of New York on 15th September 2016, where he stated that ”It is no great secret that many of the special interests funding my opponent's campaign are the same people profiting from these terrible trade deals” (Peters and Woolley, S7, 2016, p. 4).

Another way that Trump attacks Clinton’s credibility on the topic of trade deals is by questioning her consistency. He deeply criticized Clinton on several occasions for her stance on the TPP. She is perceived as populist (Peters and Woolley, S8, 2016, p. 1). Trump presents himself as a man who sticks to his promises. What was promised during his campaign will be realized if he wins the election. On the other hand, Clinton you cannot trust when she claims she will do something: “They're pushing her very hard and so she said she's against it. The day she gets in— which hopefully will never happen—she will approve or shortly thereafter TPP” (Peters and Woolley, S8, 2016, p. 1). He explicitly calls her a liar on several occasions (Peters and Woolley, S11, 2016, p.4).

To highlight the untrustworthy nature of Clinton even further, Trump chooses his adjectives for her and her campaign carefully. She repeatedly referred to as “crooked” or “corrupt” (Peters and Woolley, S10, 2016, p. 1). To emphasize this corruption, he also presents Clinton as a representative for a “rigged system” that is “corrupt and broken” through the donation rules (Peters and Woolley, S9, 2016, p. 4). The whole Clinton email controversy did not help Clinton in this regard and Trump seized the opportunity to further his point (Zurcher, 2016).

Hillary and Bill Clinton as partners in crime Another strategy employed by Trump is to continuously link Hillary Clinton with Bill Clinton. Obviously, they have very close personal ties since they are wife and husband, but Trump makes an enormous effort to portray the politician Hillary Clinton as directly responsible for the politician Bill Clinton and political decisions while being in office. Trump’s main criticism of Bill Clinton is his signature on NAFTA, the worst trade deal in history in Trump’s opinion (Peters and Woolley, S12, 2016, p. 5). Trump is also placing the blame for what he classifies as all major trade deal disasters on the Clintons. This includes TPP, NAFTA, China’s introduction to WTO (which is seen as a major cause for the US rising trade deficit), trade deals with Korea etc. (Peters and Woolley, S13, 2016, p. 4).

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Bill Clinton is also devalued ethically the same way as Hillary. Trump time and time again presents the Clintons as a team or rather partners in crime that shares the same negative attributes as seen in this example: “Bill Clinton was impeached for lying and obstructing justice, signed the worst trade deal in history, NAFTA, which emptied our country of its manufacturing jobs, and he doesn't even have the right to practice law. Hillary has brought scandal or destroyed everything she touched” (Peters and Woolley, S14, 2016, p. 2). To emphasize the opinion of the Clintons as a corrupt union he uses the phrase “the Clinton Cartel”, alluding to the South American drug cartels that earn their money through criminal conducts.

Trade deals as results of bad negotiations Trump often brings up the loss of American jobs and claims that the signing of international trade deals as the root of the problem. He fancies using the metaphor of a one-way highway to represent trade deals sending jobs one way and only sending negative consequences in return “We're a one-way highway out. We get the drugs, right? We get the drugs. We get the unemployment. We get the empty factories. Mexico and other countries get the cash. They get the employment. They get the plants” (Peters and Woolley, S9, 2016, p. 4). This is an appeal to the feelings of the audience about being treated unfairly. It is your jobs going away. Especially when talking about NAFTA Trump heavily employs the strategy of vilification and war rhetoric. Jobs are not moving South, they are “stolen”. Mexico is given agency as the enemy who actively wages economic war on the US and trade deals are equated to foreign invasions.

When talking on about the topic of American jobs going South and East, Trump uses hyperbole as a rhetorical device to a high extent. He does this by over-emphasizing crisis rhetoric about the current situation, which he calls “the greatest jobs theft in the history of the world” (Peters and Woolley, S15, 2016, p. 3) and “the worst so-called recovery since the Great Depression” (Peters and Woolley, S9, 2016, p. 4), backing his claim up by referring to the massive foreign trade deficit. At the same time, Trump glorifies the past by telling personal anecdotes like stories about flying over American cities looking down on their vibrant industries (Peters and Woolley, S16, 2016, p. 4).

As mentioned earlier, Trump places a causal connection between Clintons in charge of the US and economic ruin and makes it seem like they seek it out on purpose. American industries have not just suffered, they have been destroyed since “The Clintons gave us NAFTA and China's entry into the World Trade Organization, two deals that deindustrialized America, uprooted our industry, and stripped bare towns like Detroit and Baltimore and the

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inner cities of North Carolina” (Peters and Woolley, S17, 2016, p. 2). To emphasize this point Trump also often uses the visual imagery of closed factories when describing a picture with Hillary Clinton in charge. A vote for a Clinton is a vote for NAFTA, TPP and other “disastrous” trade deals.

Trump, the master negotiator So far, the examples brought up has focused much on the parts of Trump’s rhetoric that focus on his rival’s weaknesses. This is not to imply that he does not highlight his own strengths. He tries to build a narrative with himself as the vanguard, fighting for the weak, the American workers that are in danger of losing their jobs when global corporations seek cheaper labour abroad (Peters and Woolley, S5, 2016, pp. 1-2). His priorities lie with the American people, not the World: “Hillary Clinton believes in globalism – taking jobs from Flint and moving them to other countries. I am not running to be President of the world – I am running to be President of the United States” (Peters and Woolley, S18, 2016, p. 1).

To make these changes Trump plays to his background as a businessman. He has plenty of experience negotiating business deals, a competence that should also be applicable in relation to potential renegotiation of trade deals. In Trump’s opinion, the TPP is a lost cause, but a proper iteration of NAFTA could bring jobs back (Peters and Woolley, S5, 2016, pp. 1- 2). Trump talks about his own abilities in negotiation with great confidence, but he still keeps a door open for “failure” by presenting NAFTA negotiations in the terms of an ultimatum “We will entirely renegotiate NAFTA into a deal that will either be good for us or will be terminated until a brand new and productive deal can be signed” (Peters and Woolley, S7, 2016, p. 4). In either case, the future will be brighter for the American workers.

General rhetorical style and summary Trump rhetorical style is partially defined by extensive use of visceral and absolute language. NAFTA, “the world’s worst trade deal”, has wrought “carnage” across the country, and the TPP will “devastate” the United States. These images are used by Trump to create the notion that the US is in a state of acute crisis. The status quo is not acceptable and far- reaching reforms and new leadership is needed.

He also employs irony to ridicule his rival, as seen in this quote “Bill Clinton and his lovely wife, Hillary” where the audience immediately started booing in agreement with Hillary not being that lovely at all (Peters and Woolley, S9, 2016, p. 4). In addition to this, he is also very fond of repetition to help burn his arguments into the mind of the audience. To give his arguments added validity he often brings in statistics, like referring to the US trade deficit

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and the number of jobs that allegedly have been lost by the hand of NAFTA or other trade deals. Exactly the same job statistics are used in several different states and venues, even though they are often presented as being specific to select states and not the nation as a whole (Peters and Woolley, S19, 2016, p. 2).

In summary, Donald Trump’s rhetorical strategy seems to be offensive and very focused on attacking his rival. These attacks generally revolve around questioning the moral character of Hillary Clinton. He appeals to the audience’s ethical judgement. He paints a picture of Hillary Clinton as corrupt with economic ties to questionable people, and she is a person who cannot be trusted to steer the US in the right direction on the international scene. Bill Clinton gets the same treatment and Trump perceives Bill and Hillary’s political careers to be inseparable from each other. They both share the blame for their mistakes (especially NAFTA) equally while not getting any of the credit for successes. Trade deals like NAFTA and TPP described as the source of economic exploitation by foreign nations. In this crisis scenario, Trump presents himself as the solution. The man who can negotiate fair deals, lead the downtrodden workers to a brighter future, and make America great again.

Television ads

Clinton ads

Someplace – 3 AUG 2016

David Letterman: as the line of clothing. Now where were these made? Trump: These were made, I don't know where they were made but they were made someplace. But they're great. It's ties shirts, everything sold at Macy's and they're doing great. Letterman: Where are the shirts made? Off-screen: Bangladesh. Trump: Bangladesh. It's good. We employ people in Bangladesh. Letterman: Ties? where are the ties made? Trump: They have to work, too.... Letterman: these are beautiful ties. Trump: They are great ties. Letterman: The ties are made in where? China? Offscreen: China. Letterman: The ties are made in China.5

The commercial is referring to a 2012 segment of the David Letterman’s Late Show where Mr. Letterman is mocking Trump as his clothing line, Macy’s, is produced outside the US (Itzkoff, 2017). The segment from the show is here re-purpose as commercial to criticize

5 Video and transcription available at:

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Trump. The effectiveness of the commercial is given by the role that Mr Letterman has in the US media culture, as a trustworthy and influential public figure. The ethos is then associated with the rhetor himself, and this gives more importance and trustworthiness to the commercial even if there is no other parts or no other speaker in addition.

The commercial is so very simple as it limited just to propose the segment of the entire interview from the show, but by doing so it keeps the pathos that the audience will feel by watching the original video and it does not change the ethos and the persuasive aspect and figure of the same Mr Letterman. The message that the commercial is trying to spread to the audience is the lack of accountability of Trump on his main political slogan that he was using at the time of the commercial production. The famous message “Make America Great Again” is in this sense put under a difference light as it is possible to see that the line of clothing is produced elsewhere and showing these particular scenes the commercial emphasizes the pathos and aims to persuade the audience and arouse in them a sense of doubt towards the candidate past interview.

Shirts – 24 AUG 2016

Robert Kidder, the owner of New England Shirt Company: This factory has been here since 1883. We have over 60 people here making shirts labeled "Made in America," but Donald Trump's brand of shirts come from China, his suits from Mexico, his coats from India. Trump's products have been made in 12 other countries because he says there's no place in America that he can make them. Well, there is. You know, Donald Trump says he'll make America great again while he's taking the shirts right off our backs.6

The commercial is made during the pick-top moment of the election campaign and is directed to criticize the opposite candidate, especially regarding his most important slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ and his main political message to ‘bring back jobs and production’ in the US. In this regards in the commercial, the focus that is shown to the audience is that Trump products are not in line with his political message of limiting international trade, at least in regard to imports.

The fact that Hillary is not present in the ad could possible to relate to the fact that Hillary “doesn’t like the press and, in return, it doesn’t like her much either” (Savoy, 2017, p. 169)

6 Available at: https://newrepublic.com/

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and at her place, as focus and the rhetor position is occupied by Robert Kidder, the owner of the New England Shirt Company that is presented as a traditional and well-established US company. The message and the ethos associated assume a form of legitimacy, as it is a US entrepreneur the one that is speaking and on whom the advert is focusing on. The ethos and the effectiveness of the commercial are given by the words and presence of the company owner Robert Kidder.

The commercial opening shows the workers of the factory during the production of the shirt, as well as the owner of the company that introduces the name and the function of the company. The focus at this point is made by emphasizing the expression ‘labeled Made in America’ that is reported also with the physical image of the label on a shirt. Then the presentation of the owner shifts on the description of the provenience of the brands of Trump, pointing the fact that, instead of the products of Kidder’ s company, the ones of Trump are made in other different countries. The white text on the black screen and Kidder’s words ‘Trump’s products have been made in 12 other countries’ is adding more pathos to the commercial as the audience is put in front of the fact that Trump is exporting the production of its own brands outside the US. Especially when the commercial exposes that Trump is the one saying that he can’t find a place where to produce its brands, following then by the statement of the same owner that expose the hypocrisy of Trump.

Hat – 27 AUG 2016

He wears it like a crown. Make America great again. But Trump made his shirts in Bangladesh, his ties in China, and his suits in Mexico. In fact, the real Donald Trump outsourced his products and jobs to 12 different countries. So don't believe the hat. You can't make America great again if you don't make things in America.7

On the same line as the commercial Shirts is the commercial Hat. This time the focus is the hat line of Trump with his political slogan ‘Make America Great Again’. This time there is no physical rhetor that is addressing the problem to the audience. The only voice that is addressing the audience is the speaker and the use of the text help focusing and emphasizing the message of the commercial. In this case, the ethos is less powerful than the other commercials for the fact that there is not a physical rhetor or a figure in whom the audience could recognize in it. The only images that are presented are on Trump and on its

7 Available at: https://newrepublic.com/

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different brand clothes. For this regard, the pathos is more accentuate as the slogan “Make America Great Again” is changed every time to show the different countries in which Trump produces the different type of clothing or where he has the major places of production. And towards the end of the commercial, the spectator is addressed with the phrase “don’t believe the hat”, using the metaphor for which regards the political slogan of Trump on trade is could possible to be summarized using the hat that is produced elsewhere and not in the US.

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Trump ads

America soaring – 1 AUG 2016

Skilled craftsmen and trades people, and factory workers have seen the jobs they love shipped thousands of miles away. It doesn't have to be this way. We can turn it around. It will be American steel, just like the American steel that built the Empire State Building, that will fortify America's crumbling bridges. It will be American steel that rebuilds our inner cities, it will be American steel that sends our skyscrapers soaring. It will be American hands, American workers that will make this country great again. We're going to be working again. We're going to have great jobs again. We're going to make America great again for everyone. Greater than ever before. Rebuilding America Now PAC is responsible for the content of this message.8

The commercial is showing workers during their work-shift at work. In this way, the audience knows already on which topic the commercial will relate about. The use of the black and white in the scenes is giving to the commercial an aura of importance. As the black and white accentuate the significance and importance of the scene. Just at the end of the commercial when the political agenda of Trump is explained briefly, the colours of the commercial will pass from the black and white to natural and vivid colours. Also, the style and tone of the speaker's voice is made to emphasize and accompanying the commercial by transmitting more importance and persuasive effect. The pathos, in this case, is occupying a central position and the message of the commercial is built around it.

The message of the commercial is focusing on the loss of jobs and the movement of the same toward other countries outside the US. There is so, the recurrent theme of the victimization of the US because of the job-stealing that is happening and happened. Even if it is not mentioned directly on the commercial, the speaker is referring on the international trade agreements that Trump and his campaign considered to blame for the job scarcity in the US in the last decade. And the continuous adjective ‘American’ is used as a reference to the political agenda of Trump that will bring again the jobs in the US and want to re-establish the production of the most important factories back in the US. In this case, there are no mentions either to Trump or Hillary or to the political establishment responsible for the trade deals.

8 Video and transcription available at https://newrepublic.com

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Deals – 18 OCT 2016

Our economy once dominated the world. And our middle class thrived. Today jobs are gone. Factories closed. Because of bad trade deals pushed by the Clintons. That sent our jobs to other countries. Donald Trump's plan: Renegotiate NAFTA. Stop foreign nations from cheating us. Cut taxes to reopen factories. Donald Trump knows business and he'll fight for the American worker.9

In this commercial, the theme of the victimization of the US is put in an even central role. The highlighting with the phrase “today jobs are gone” is central in the rhetoric of the pro- Trump political agenda. In this case, there is the mention, and the addressing of the blame, to the previous political establishment in the figure of the Clintons, both former President Bill and the other candidate Hillary, signing the NAFTA trade agreement. The theme that is transpiring in this commercial is the expose of a distance between Trump and his political agenda, and the previous political establishment, in particular, the opposite candidate Hillary, portrayed as one of the responsible of the NAFTA trade.

This blaming is put in effect with the relation of the speaker and the figure of Trump that is seeing in these last scenes waving and meeting with the same workers. The figure of a leader is, so, pitted Trump as the man of change against Hillary, the responsible for the trade deal whose effects are listed and explained at the beginning of the commercial. In this case, the commercial is attacking directly the opponent, and this could be related to the date of production of the same commercial, namely the last months of the election campaign. The style, tone and message are thus more incisive rather than the other commercial regarding the trade debate.

9 Available at: https://newrepublic.com

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Donald Trump’s argument for America – 4 NOV 2016

Donald Trump: Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American people. The establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election. For those who control the levers of power in Washington and for the global special interests, they partner with these people that don't have your good in mind. The political establishment, that is trying to stop us, is the same group responsible for our disastrous trade deals, massive illegal immigration, and economic and foreign policies that have bled our country dry. The political establishment has brought about the destruction of our factories and our jobs as they flee to Mexico, China, and other countries all around the world. It's a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth, and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities. The only thing that can stop this corrupt machine is you. The only force strong enough to save our country is us. The only people brave enough to vote out this corrupt establishment is you, the American people. I'm doing this for the people and for the movement and we will take back this country for you and we will make America great again.10

In this commercial, the part of the rhetor is taken by the then-President Trump. Evidently, the situated ethos associated with the rhetor himself is the single most important and effective persuasive aspect of the commercial. First, because of his uncanny ability to captivate an audience and explain his opinion, but more importantly because of what he represents for a part of American voters, an outsider not linked to the previous political establishment. Even though during the commercial the only political figures are from the Democratic party, there is not the presence of any reference to the role and objective of the Republican party but only on the power to the people. The use of the word “our” and “us” reveals the position that Trump wants to portray about himself, of the representative of the common US citizens against the political establishment.

The argument of trade is well specified, as it is possible to notice from the inclusion of the dates, the president in charge and the name of the two trade agreements, NAFTA and TPP that were signed by the previous political establishment. The accountability of Hillary is then

10 Available at: newrepublic.com

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massively present during all the duration of the commercial as there are multiple scenes of her in different political events in different periods and she is portrayed as the main and only responsible and political figure accountable to the support of these trade deals. The persuasive effect is then covered by the figure and voice of the same Trump that is explaining the responsibilities and problem, and the relative solutions that he will undertake for stopping this victimization of the US. Especially, it could be said that Trump inherent sincerity of his delivery, lead his audience to invest a considerable amount of credibility and trust in him. And this confidence is possible to be seen from the tone of the speech, that is more aggressive and more critical towards the opposite candidate. This is could be explained also by the fact that the commercial has been made in the last days of the presidential campaign and could be interpreted as a last measure for convincing the audience of the side of candidate Trump.

Presidential debates

Analysis of the 2016 Trump and Clinton debates included two debates out of three which were held; each of them broadcast by different US news broadcasters—abc (on 26th September), NBC (on 9th October which was not included), and the final debate held on Bloomberg Politics (19th October). The analysis was carried out using the search words: Trade AND Deal, including stemmed words.

The nature of a debate—two or more participants interacting with delivering their message in, often in response to questions and from interviewers, audience, and fellow participants— allows for observation of the rhetoric, when delivered in close relation to the rhetoric of other participants within the debate.

Analysis of the 2016 presidential debates provided the study with the opportunity to observe how rhetoric was used; when in close-quarters to the opponent’s rhetoric. The debate scenario created instances in which both Trump and Clinton were delivering their message, live, in response to probing questions, and accusations against one another.

The emotion behind US trade relations

Trump: The Victimisation of the US

When describing the way in which foreign industry interacts with US industry, Trump often refers to those nations as “taking”, “stealing”, that America is being “ripped-off”; he also

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refers to the NAFTA as a happening, as in “one of the worst things that ever happened to” American manufacturing (POLITICO, 2016, DB111) This communicates the NAFTA as something that the US industry and, in turn, US citizens had no control over—similar to victims of a natural disaster, a disaster approved, signed and welcomed by Bill Clinton. Coupled with the rhetoric of criminality—foreign business “stealing” industry and jobs— portrays to the audience that politicians have, so far, allowed them to become victims of crimes by other nations.

This communication of the NAFTA may be a result of Trump’s background in business. He himself, as an American businessman, may have felt a lack of influence other the final agreed NAFTA deal. Naturally, leading to his call for more American business minds, and fewer politicians to be key players in future trade negotiations, “We have the greatest business people in the world. We have to use them to negotiate our trade deals. We use political hacks.” (POLITICO, 2016, DB2).

Adding to this, Trump’s background in business may also contribute to a disconnect leading to noise between him and the audience. In common business language, “stealing” does not have the same connotations as it does to those instances outside of business. Referring to other nations as “stealing” jobs and industry in the context of a diverse audience may deliver both the business non-criminal context and common negative criminal context. Instead of the audience interpreting foreign business as playing by the rules set out in the agreement, and out-competing US industry, the audience may interpret foreign industry as stealing business in closer to the, more common, criminal sense.

Clinton: Smart and fair future deals

In contrast to Trump's rhetoric, Clinton states “we are 5 per cent of the world's population; we have to trade with the other 95 per cent.”(POLITICO, 2016, DB1). Having chosen not to refer to competing nations as stealing and by not outwardly criticizing the NAFTA or TPP, Hillary has chosen a different path in her rhetoric regarding trade deals.

Like Trump, Clinton’s employment background may be key to how she approaches the trade issue. She does so without referring to foreign countries as stealing or even taking American jobs/industry. This can be a result of Hillary’s experience as a politician, in which it would be wise not to speak badly of those who you may seek to negotiate with in the future.

11 See Appendix for the transcription of the debate (DB).

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There may also be a reluctance from Hillary to participate in Trump’s rhetoric of “taking our jobs”, as this is can be seen as an almost cliched conservative statement. Instead, in the few statements that Hillary does make about future trade deals, she states that America needs “smart” and “fair” trade deals (POLITICO, 2016, DB1). Implying that foreign nations should be worked with, not necessarily to be competed against or seen as aggressors.

This approach can appear misguided, or naive to the an audience which has decided on the competing nations as “stealing” jobs and industry in the criminal sense as presented by Trump, and not in the business sense, which would be nations and businesses simply operating in their own self interest within the law and, through that, out-competing the US.

Me First

During the debates both Trump and Clinton attempt to assert the originality of their own stance against the trade deals, both communicating that they came to the conclusion that the NAFTA and TPP were bad for American business first, both attempting to prove so with anecdotal evidence.

Trump is the first to assert that his stance against the NAFTA is original; quoting Hillary saying “You called it the gold standard of trade deals. You said it's the finest deal you've ever seen.”, following up with, “And then you heard what I said about it, and all of a sudden you were against it.”(POLITICO, 2016, DB1)

Hillary dismisses this claim, to state that the deal she had hoped for was not the deal which came to be. Stating that she wrote this in her book; which was written, Hillary adds, “before you even announced.” (POLITICO, 2016, DB1)

This jostling to claim they were the first to reach the conclusion that the NAFTA and TPP were bad for American business shows that both candidates see an importance in portraying that their stance as an original thought; Trump wants to prove the audience that he realised that something needs to be done about trade before Hillary, and Hillary wants to make it clear that she is not following Trump's lead on this issue, and in fact expressed her dissatisfaction with the NAFTA before Trump did himself.

The battle to be viewed as the original thinker behind the pursuit of better trade deals presents a potentially key factor within the idea of Issue Ownership in the instance of Valence Issues. The presidential debates see the competing parties drawing on the how

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early each of them noticed the issue, and drawing on this in order to further convince the electorate that they themselves are the candidate who is most qualified to handle the Valence Issue.

Portraying Trump’s Protectionism as hypocrisy

One of Hillary’s main attempts to delegitimize Trump’s disapproval on the trade issue—other than highlighting her experience in politics, which completely outweighs that of Trump—is to draw the audience’s attention to Trump’s international business dealings. Stating “There's only one of us on this stage who has actually shipped jobs to Mexico because that's Donald.” (POLITICO, 2016, DB2) following on to list the instances in which Trump outsourced manufacturing to Mexico and bought resources from China. This point was the only offensive push—referring to the offensive and defensive rhetoric referred to by Symon (2000)—made toward Trump during a debate. This being the only offensive statement made by Hillary, in comparison to Trump’s constant offensive pushes, denotes that Hillary was less invested in the Valence Issue of the NAFTA and TPP, suggesting that she did not consider it to be of importance to her intended audience and the success of her campaign—in relation to other issues.

This information is open to interpretations which are both positive and negative to her argument. On one hand it can appear hypocritical that Trump speaks out against the NAFTA and TPP, when he himself appears to benefit from cheaper foreign manufacturing, apparently produced from such trade deals—aligning Trump with a ‘do as I say not as I do’ agenda. This attempt to delegitimize Trump’s argument due to hypocrisy, can undermine Trump’s protectionist stance because it raises the question in the audience of whether Trump genuinely is against a trade environment which benefits himself?

On the other hand, Trump has been, primarily, a businessman. He conducted his business within the business environment which was partly created by the government, partly through the trade agreements they took part in. Like many other American business people and business owners, Trump was operating under the pressure of the global market. This does not necessarily mean that he believed it was morally good or good for America, but it allowed his business to thrive. To come out against the same trade policy which he is currently benefiting from, in this context, shows integrity. As those Trump’s bringing down of the trade deals is an act of sacrifice in pursuit of the long-term good for American industry, and reducing America’s dependence on foreign businesses.

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Tweets

Trump tweets

In Trump’s tweets, there were a few mentions to trade deals. Most of them were explicit references to TPP and NAFTA. Almost all of them are presented as attacks on Hillary Clinton in relation to the issue, but there are also a few where the Democratic party is highlighted instead of Clinton. Most of the attacks centre around Clinton’s credibility, where Trump seeks to present Clinton as not being dependable. Trump warns that Clinton will not live up to the promises she has made during the campaign and equates this to betraying her country “Clinton camp fumed when surrogate told supporters Clinton planned to betray labour on TPP post-election” (post from 2nd November 2016). A vote on Clinton is directly linked to a vote for TPP/NAFTA.

This portrayal of Clinton undependable was further strengthened in other tweets where Trump tried to link Clinton to campaign donors lobbying for trade deals to remain and providing proof at the same time “Hillary’s Aides Urged Her to Take Foreign Lobbyist Donation And Deal With Attacks: http:// newsninja2012.com/wikileaks-hill” (posted on 18th October 2016). In addition to this Trump also brought up Clinton’s inconsistent history in regard to her stance on TPP and NAFTA.

Clinton is also presented as weak and having poor judgement in politics, where the support to the signing of NAFTA is elevated to a ‘proof’ in Trump’s rhetoric as seen in this post “Hillary is too weak to lead on border security-no solutions, no ideas, no credibility. She supported NAFTA, worst deal in US history. #Debate” (Posted on 19th October 2016). Abilities like these are commonly connected to successful leadership, thereby making Clinton seem unfit to the role as President of the United States, the most powerful leader in the World.

Trump did not only focus on Clinton. He also posted tweets that focused on his own abilities and promises to the American people (the majority of his tweets still focused on Clinton). He presented his own ability to negotiate trade deals by using ultimatums “I will renegotiate NAFTA. If I can’t make a great deal, we’re going to tear it up. We’re going to get this economy running again. #Debate” (posted on 19th October 2016). Here Trump tries to convince the audience that he is adamant in his opinions and not willing to back down when he meets hardship.

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The majority of the tweets were posted in the vicinity of the 19th October 2016. This was the date of the final presidential before election day, where trade deals were a major topic. Because of this, most of the tweets referencing trade deals should be considered supplementary comments to the debate to further clarify Trump’s position on the matter to a wider audience (that might not have seen the debate live). This is a common strategy to create “echo chambers of ‘cheering and jeering’” (Graham, 2014, p. 778).

Hillary tweets

Hillary Clinton did not have any direct mentions to TPP or NAFTA. It did not seem like she had any interest in taking active ownership of the issue on this particular communication platform. She only made two implicit mentions to trade deals.

The first example of a Clinton tweet referring to international trade was posted on the 11th of August 2016. In the tweet, Clinton states “Trump may talk a big game on trade, but his approach is based on fear, not strength—fear that we can’t compete with the rest of the world”. Here it seems that Clinton seeks to undermine Trump’s self-proclamation as the solution to the issues the US experiences with ‘unfair’ trade deals, while simultaneously appealing to the patriotism of the audience. This makes Trump’s protectionist approach seem like cowering in fear rather than taking charge and solve the problem. The use of ‘strength’ probably refers to the US position as an economic and military hegemony which further emphasize the ability to take charge and choose the solution that is best for the American people.

The only other reference in a tweet was posted on the 9th October 2016 with the text “Trump talks tough on trade and Chinese steel hurting American workers—but he bought Chinese steel for two of his last three buildings”. The date of the posting is well into the campaign where Clinton showed her awareness about a topic that Trump used to a large extent throughout his campaign (the appeal to factory workers in states such as Pennsylvania that have long histories with steel industry). Here she tries to call Trump out on his own hypocrisy about wanting to protect the American steel industry from foreign competitors, but still, he uses cheaper foreign alternatives in his own private business.

Statements

Statements have only been utilized as communication by Hillary Clinton. A statement is different to a press release in that it is often a comment on a recent event to the press where

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the opinion is often not backed up by references and evidence to support the argument, compared to a traditional press release where this often is the case. In statements released by Hillary Clinton, there is almost no reference to trade deals – only two examples in total. Both are found in responses to Clinton’s endorsement By Association of Professional Flight Attendants which is a two-part response on the same topic. Both mentions are found at the end of the statements as a fleeting remark and are not being built up as a larger argument throughout the statements. The statements are more concerned with fair labour conditions and Trump’s take on tax changes.

In the first statement the Trans-Pacific Partnership is mentioned explicitly and is declared a “bad trade deal” and Clinton promises to reject similar trade deals, but she does not elaborate on the topic (Peters and Woolley, 2016, ST112, §4). In the second example, there is no mention of any specific trade deals, but trade deals are met with the same rejecting attitude. Clinton will say no to bad trade deals (Peters and Woolley, 2016, ST1, §5).

In both cases, trade deals are mentioned in the same breath as attacks on workers, discrimination, sexism and attacks on workers. These topics can all generally be considered offensive to the victims, and by mentioning trade deals along them, it builds a negative impression of trade deals as something that limits or hurts US citizens instead of bringing prosperity and benefits to those people. The persuasive appeal to the audience is ethical since Clinton highlights topics that could by many be considered immoral, and her approach is deliberate in that she promises to make changes to exactly those topics in the future if she is elected as the US president. Regarding NAFTA, Hillary Clinton made no mentions to it in her statements, neither explicit or implicit.

Press releases

Most of Hillary Clinton’s press releases were handled by her campaign team, Hillary for America. Similar to the case of statements by Clinton, the press releases also only have very few mentions of trade deals. Relevant references were only found in a single press release from John Podesta, the chairman of Clinton’s campaign (released on 31/8/2016). The press release came as a response to Donald Trump’s meeting with the President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto on the 31/8/2016. Some of the topics of the meeting were the potential wall to be built along the border between the U.S. and Mexico, and who was supposed that was supposed to pay for the construction of it (Sarlin, 2016).

12 ST = Statement, see appendix for statement and speech list

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The press release consists almost purely of Trump quotes from early 2016. The only exception is the two opening paragraphs where Podesta criticizes Trump’s ambition to make Mexico pay for the wall and ridicules Trump’s self-professed title as the ultimate deal maker, where Podesta questions Trump’s courage in negotiation situations. The quotes are not accompanied by any direct comments from the Clinton camp as could usually be expected in a case like that.

Half of the quotes are not related to international trade deals, while the other half implicitly references NAFTA. This is done through quotes where Trump states that he is not afraid to engage in a trade war with Mexico in an attempt to coerce them into paying for the wall. Mexico was at the time of the press release allowed free trade with the United States facilitated by both parties being members of NAFTA in §5 and §6. When countries are engaged in a trade war, the countries do not combat each other with soldiers and weaponry but with ongoing tariff implementation or by raising existing tariffs. A current example of a trade war is the one that has been going on between the United States and China since August 2018. The problem with trade wars is that they hurt both sides in the long run by reducing exports in production sectors affected by the specific tariffs (Liu and Woo, 2018, p. 320).

That Podesta highlighted quotes where Trump was overly enthusiastic about discarding free trade agreements in favour of trade wars paints a picture of Trump as a loose cannon. In the quotes Trump does not seem to consider the consequences, or at least he is so certain that his strategies for renegotiating trade deals will be successful, which is shown in this quote: “when I say no more trade, once you -- once they know that you are really willing to go that extra length, there will always be trade, but we'll make good deals” in §6. The use of ‘always’ implies the impossibility of failure. Trump is certain that he will always come out on top. It is just a matter of him asserting himself.

The content of Podesta’s press release seems to be arranged in a fashion that is intended to falsify the claims and promises by Trump in the included quotations. This is done by Podesta first ‘proving’ Trump’s incompetence as a negotiator and a strategist by bringing up the meeting with Enrique Peña Nieto, where Trump failed to deliver on his promises to make Mexico accept to pay the expenses for the wall. This is followed by four paragraphs with quotations where Trump explicitly highlights his own proficiency in negotiating deals, including trade deals. Trump’s claims no longer seem as convincing with the details of the Trump-Nieto meeting fresh in memory. Podesta does not build up an argument in a

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traditional fashion with facts and figures to alter the audience’s perception of Trump but instead lets Trump do the legwork by cherry-picking quotes that prove his point.

According to the databases we have used to gather our data, Trump did not use press releases as a platform for communication during the time period we have chosen to investigate. Therefore, analysis of press releases is limited to those released by Hillary Clinton.

Facebook

Clinton Facebook posts

There is no mention of the keywords identified as essential for the textual analysis of the rhetoric used by the two candidates in the posts updated by Hillary Clinton. There have been 289 posts by her and the reluctance to mention or discuss international trade shows her lack of confidence on the topic. Even though she had been engaging in Facebook more than Donald Trump (as she outnumbered Trump with 289 posts to 267 posts by Trump) the absence of the topic in her Facebook status displays that she is uncomfortable with it.

Labour unions have been one of the primary constituencies of the Democratic party who has been opposed to tradedeals since NAFTA and WTO mainly due to fear of outsourcing of jobs to competing economies. With NAFTA the fear was against Mexican labour force and WTO added another dimension in the form of China. President Bush and Obama viewed TPP as a bulwark against China’s influence in the Pacific and South-East Asia (Cavin, 2017). Clinton also supported the deal at the time and had stated it as “the golden standard” while she was the Secretary of State under Obama. No mention of the trade deals on her posts proves her realization of the growing sentiment of their major constituency against the Partnership. Immediately after stepping into as a primary candidate for the US presidency she changed her stance on the trade deal understanding the importance of the labour unions in the election.

Clinton can be seen ‘jumping the bandwagon’, conforming to the sentiments of their constituencies (Weaver, 1986), from being a pro-TPP while it was being negotiated to anti- TPP just before the elections. Critics on the trade deals, TPP and NAFTA, had been congressional Democrats and labour unions arguing that these deals favoured large corporations, outsourced jobs and contaminated the environment (Masters, no date). She had to suppress her own views of policies which clashed with the vision of the members of the democratic constituency. Her change of stance is a very highly persuasive act which

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demonstrates that she is immensely involved in the issue and responded honestly to its demands. (Cockcroft, 1992, 24)

Trump Facebook posts

Between the two candidates, only Trump talks about international deals with two mentions of trade, two of NAFTA and one of TPP explicitly. The first mention of trade deals is on Monday, September 5, 2016, on the occasion of Labor day in the US. He begins the post with the words “Labor Day”, to mark the significance of his status and the accompanying video with the day on which it was published. By reference to the history of American workers he emphasizes on their role in the shaping the America (US) of the present. He identifies himself with the American workers by using ‘we’ and presents his stance amongst the American workers. He then presents a grim picture of the state of labourers by presenting data in ‘millions of Americans’ and instils a sense of urgency with ‘must do’. He ends his status with a constructive image for the future where he will bring employment back from the competing nations by terminating the trade deals which according to him are ‘bad trade deals’.

The second mention of trade deals was on November 4, 2016, and was again accompanied by a video. It is the same video which has been discussed earlier in the Advertisement section. The difference of this video with the earlier post is that the transcript of the whole video has been posted along with it. As mentioned before, it was posted few days before the actual elections, hence, it can be seen as his final attempt to shed light on his views regarding international trade deals as a disaster for the US economy. He presents himself not motivated by self-interest rather the benefits of the American citizens.

The term TPP is mentioned on one occasion i.e. on 27 September 2016 after the first presidential debate between the two candidates the previous day. The video itself is about two and a half minute long section of the debate between the two where trump accuses Clinton of trying to steal his original stance of TPP being bad for American citizens. Here, the post is different from others in the fact that he has put a title on the video “Trump presses Clinton on TPP” to present himself as the winner of the two on the topic of TPP. The description of the video states “Hillary Clinton was for TPP before she was against it! She even called it the "gold standard" of trade agreements!”. The description is used to emphasize Clinton’s original position on the trade deal and to claim the originality of their attitude on the trade deal as his own.

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Posts with NAFTA

2nd August 2016 “I believe in making the best deals for America and NAFTA was a horrible deal! I want to make great deals that will keep jobs here and employ millions of Americans. We MUST get America back to work!”.

The post targets specifically the NAFTA blaming it for the problem of the unemployment faced by the US citizens. It is uploaded along with a video in which he criticizes NAFTA as the worst trade deal of all time and blames former president Bill Clinton for signing the deal. In the video, here again, the pictures a negative image of the state of American workers by highlighting that people are going to be HAPPY AGAIN. Also, in the description, capitalization of ‘MUST‘ adds to the rhetoric of the American workforce as unemployed. Although he begins the description with an optimistic note of making ‘best deals’ for America, he reverts back to his rhetoric of pessimistic view on the situation of the American people.

18 October 2016 The Obama-Clinton economy has DEVASTATED our hard-working families. As president, I will renegotiate NAFTA, stop foreign nations from cheating us, and cut taxes to reopen factories. America will stand STRONG on the world stage once again! #AmericaFirst (Trump, 2016).

It is another of the televised advertisement which has been used by trump on the Facebook platform. Once more, he is using the rhetoric of victimizing the American working citizens by the hands of foreign nations. The blame this time is on Obama in addition to Clinton for the ‘devastation’ of the American workforce. His capitalization of the words devastated, NAFTA and strong is an attempt to link NAFTA with his rhetoric of portrayal of the US economy in distress.

Discussion

Findings

As seen in the analysis section of this project, there are some variations in the ways that the valence issue of international trade deals are approached by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump based on the platform they use.

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As visible in the statistical word analysis, it is evident that Clinton tried to avoid the issues of NAFTA and TPP across all platforms, while Trump engaged in the discussion of the topic very often. An exception to this is the presidential debates where Clinton engaged in the issue of trade deals, but the main reason for this is that Trump challenged her on the issue seeking a direct response from her. This represents a tendency that was common throughout most of the analysed content, where Trump often used more offensive rhetoric trying to undermine Clinton’s competence as a politician and her ethical character in general. His approach could often be considered forensic in his attempts to place blame on Clinton in signing trade deals that Trump considered damaging to the American economy. In extension to this, he also used a deliberate approach by calling out for changes and reforms. In the Aristotelian terms, he often made appeals to the audience dominated by pathos, feelings, and ethos, highlighting his own ethical credibility in contrast to Clinton.

Clinton was more evasive and often more defensive in her rhetoric, trying to defend her earlier decisions and merits in politics in regard to trade deals and the attacks on her consistency on the issue. This is not to say that Clinton was not also employing offensive rhetoric. Especially in the television ads, Clinton’s approach to Trump is very aggressive, where the main criticism is his hypocrisy when he talking about disastrous trade deals and America first one moment, while still outsourcing production of his own companies to other countries. This does not deter from the general picture where Clinton’s appeal was more focused on logos, trying to make the audience see her change in stance on NAFTA and TPP was reasonable. Like Trump she also presented her arguments as forensic and deliberate, albeit less focus on placing blame than Trump did but still promising reforms. None of the candidates employed epideictic rhetoric, since they both agreed that the status quo was not acceptable in relation to international trade and trade deals. This was very evident in Trump’s efforts to frame the US as in a state of crisis (Hart and Tindall, 2009, p. 23).

The explicit mentions of the two main trade agreements cover a central aspect in the discussion of this essay. As already mentioned above in the text analysis, there is a gap between the discourse of Trump and the one of Hillary. Regarding the discourse of Trump, it is possible to notice that there is a presence of direct mentions of the two trade agreements especially in relation to the Hillary former position and consistency, especially about her role on negotiations and previous support on them. Trump in this sense uses an aggressive tactic where Hillary is seen as fully of the trade deals and their negative consequences and effect on the US economy. In this way, during the presidential campaign, the arguments on NAFTA and TPP are used as a tool to direct attack the previous political establishment on

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which Hillary is seen as a member. The exposition of the solutions to the problems created by the trade agreements have a small space in the debate and are not followed by a complex or based on fact argument, but they followed a more general set of ideas and proclaims.

Regarding the discourse of Hillary, instead, it is possible to notice that there is no explicit mention of the two deals but the general and indirect mention of the trade agreements and their importance on the political debate.

Social media usage

One of the more interesting findings in the analysis was that Trump only used social media rather sporadically to discuss trade deals. For Clinton, it made more sense because her strategy seemed to be to try to avoid the issue as much as possible across all platforms. Trump discussed NAFTA, TPP and trade deals extensively in his use of traditional media, so he obviously did not try to avoid the issue. This is in sharp contrast to current research where there is a general consensus that after the rise of Web 2.0, political campaigning through social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, is on a steep rise in the West (Graham et al., 2016; Vergeer, 2015; Magin et al., 2017).

If trade deals are to be considered an important valence issue and Trump wanted to take ownership of the issue, then it would be fair to assume that he would utilize every available media platform extensively to discuss this issue. This is further supported by the fact that social media generally is very easy to adopt for the user and the costs of campaigning through social media are much lower than through traditional media. In addition to this, social media also allows the campaigner to reach a far wider audience than with traditional modes of communication, like speeches that are limited by physical space and accessibility for the audience in relation to geography (Vergeer, 2015, p. 746). It has been argued that many political parties and politicians perceive social media as a necessity rather than a golden opportunity. Many still prefer traditional media because it is a more controlled arena of communication with one-way access to their target groups, but fear that not utilizing social media is risking to lose the election (Magin, 2017, pp. 1707-1708).

The case here is not Trump not utilizing social media in general, he very much did (Francia, 2018). Most posts were just no concerned with discussing trade deals, which implies Trump considering it less important than other topics. Alternatively, this might be connected to his more passionate way of communicating with the audience, as seen in the analysis, which

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would be more likely to be successful in getting his opinions across when delivered in person, like at public speeches or presidential debates.

Discussion of ownership

Both parties constructed a stance to legitimise their claim to the new, critical perspective toward the NAFTA & TPP trade deals. Trump, as an American businessman amongst the fellow American businesspeople who have had to adapt to tough competition—brought about by “defective” trade deals. And Hillary, a near lifelong politician with over 20 years of experience in interior and international politic, including the discussion and negotiation of trade agreements themselves. Both positioned their experiences and expertise as what was required to lead the US into a better standing against the global business competition.

Trump’s efforts in crisis rhetoric (Hart and Tindall, 2009, pp. 21-23) and repeated offensive pushes (Symon, 2000) centred around the subject of trade agreements clearly indicate a desire, on his part, to take ownership of the issue of the NAFTA and TPP. As stated by Carmines, (1991) successful politicians know which issue benefit their campaign, and which issues do not.

The analysis of this study shows that, with no prior experience in politics, Donald Trump actively curated the issues to which voters looked to his party for answers. American business owners and those trapped in towns and states stricken with unemployment could easily identify which candidate was talking about the issues they were concerned about— retrieving the jobs and industry, that once were, back to the US.

Trump made sure that this opinion and roadmap to dealing with defective trade deals were heard. By highlighting the NAFTA, TPP, and their effects as a crisis (Hart and Tindall, 2009: 21-23) brought upon the American people, Trump made clear what he cared about, and went further to make clear who was responsible. The frequency and emotion with which the Trump campaign brought trade deals to the agenda, indicated to this study that the Trump campaign recognised the potential importance of the trade issue to the majority of the electorate. Whereas the Clinton campaign, did not deem the trade issue to be relevant to their potential voters or their overall campaign.

The Hillary campaign ‘played-along’ in response to Trump—discussing the trade deals with reluctance—though not consciously stating how unimportant it has been deemed by the party; rhetoric in its purest form according, to McCroskey’s definition—aiming to

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communicate a message which may not actually be considered to be wholly true by those communicating said message (1997, p.31).

The contrast between the vigour of each party’s approach to the issue of how to fix trade deals highlights how differently the two parties viewed the importance of the issue. The mistaken view lying on Hillary's side. If valence issues are generally adapted to appeal to the middle-ground voters (French and Smith, 2010), the choice to engage minimally on the issue of trade may have been fatal to the Hillary campaign. Her loss may have been due to a misjudgment of what middle ground voters considered important, and using that misjudgment to measure the extent to with the campaign will engage the trade issue.

Finally a clear dynamic of seeking ownership, by the Trump campaign, and avoidance, by the Clinton campaign, can be observed in the rhetoric applied to the issue of the NAFTA & TPP; as well as a dynamic of offence and defence (Symon, 2000), in the interplay between the two campaigns in regard to the trade issue. Occasions in which debates were turned toward trade, by Trump, and away from the trade, by Hillary, toward Trump’s weaker or more controversial areas, clearly denotes that both campaigns at least attempted to take ownership of the new, critical approach to international trade deals. However, the Clinton campaign did not move toward the trade issue, in the same way, potentially acknowledging that Hillary’s sudden change of stance toward the NAFTA & TPP would be received negatively or sceptically by the audience.

Limitations

Even though this project includes quite extensive analysis, there are still areas that we could have expanded on. As a result of using only one-directional communication from the candidates to the audience, we have not analyzed the audiences’ responses to the candidates’ communication strategies. Our analysis provided potential reactions drawn from rhetorical theory, but this does not guarantee that this was actually the case.

Another limitation was based on the nature of this project as a group effort. We delegated the responsibility of analysis evenly between the members of the group, each member analysing a specific category of the data source. One member analysed all the debates, another member analysed all the speeches, a third member analysed the video advertisement etc. Since rhetorical analysis is a method that is not clearly defined in academia and requires extensive interpretative efforts, they style of rhetorical analysis can vary quite significantly from one analyst to another (Symon, 2000). This has also been the

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case in our group where some members naturally leaned more towards a contextual approach to the analysis, while other members preferred a more textual. This is most likely a result of the great diversity in academic backgrounds represented in our group. Another factor is also the specific data source where some naturally demands one approach over another, like in the case of social media posts like Tweets, where the textual content is quite limited in size and often plays to the audience’s contextual knowledge, in turn leading to a more contextual analysis (Corbett and Edwards, 2018).

Conclusion

For this project, we set out to research how politicians differentiate themselves from their rivals on topics both sides agree on. For this purpose, we analysed the rivalry between Trump and Clinton during the US presidential campaign in 2016.

The candidates showed to employ very different rhetorical strategies when discussing the topic of international trade deals. Trump was more aggressive in his approach and took active ownership of the issue by presenting changes he would make to change the status quo while at the same time trying to undermine Clinton’s credibility.

Although, there were occasions when Hillary turned the discourse toward Trump’s more vulnerable areas: his personal benefit from global business and his personal character flaws, Clinton’s approach was, in contrast to Trump, generally more defensive. Her focus was to defend against Trump’s continuous attacks on her persona while trying to prove her competence in politics in the eyes of the American voters.

It became so that both candidates weaponised each other's self-promoted experience against one another: Trump’s pure business background, highlighted his lack of political acumen. Hillary’s extensive high profile career in American politics made her an accessory and enabler to the now vilified trade deals. Although in the case of this issue, Trump’s exotic but flawed background came through to position him as a fellow “victim” of the defective trade negotiations, a non-political, American, business owner, looking to hold the “political hacks” accountable for their perceived negligence toward American industry. The Clinton campaign knew, like Trump, that a better, smarter, more critical approach to trade deals was needed; however, the political experience which could have won some elections was weaponized against her campaign, to brand her as inauthentic, deceitful and at best ineffective, by Trump’s relentless offensive campaign.

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