Donald Trump’s Scandals

A study in discoursal structures on Twitter

(Mashable, 2017)

Basic Project. 1 - SIB-F-17 - S18-SIB1-01

Benjamin Udsen Armfelt (63597)

Bertram Arly Møller-Jacobsen (63632)

Casper Stage Hansen (63605)

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Table of contents

Table of contents 2

1. Project Design. 3 1.1. Problem Formulation 3 1.2. Problem Area 3 1.3. Analytical Strategy 4 1.4. Research Question 5 1.5. Working Questions 5 1.6. Methodology 5 1.6.1. Twitter Event 5 1.6.2. Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis 6 1.7. Theoretical framework 8 1.7.1. The Connection Between Twitter Events, Scandals and Discourse Analysis 8 1.7.2. Discoursal Pressures in Politics 8 1.7.3. Echo Chambers 11 1.7.4. Polarization 12 1.8. Limitations and Delimitations 13 2.0. State of the Art. 14 2.1. Literature Review. 14 2.2. Character Background. 18 2.2.1. Donald Trump. 18 2.2.2. John McCain. 19 3.0. American Polarization, Echo chambers, and the Conservative Voter Base. 21 3.1. Polarization and Echo Chambers in the United States of America 21 3.2. Voter Turnout and Political Affiliation. 24 4.0. Discourse Analysis 27

5.0. Discussion 34 5.1. Social Media Attention and Voting Patterns. 34 5.2. Scandals and Donald Trump. 37 6.0. Conclusion 39

7.0. Bibliography 41

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1. Project Design.

In this chapter we will outline the project design by walking the reader through the area of our research, the methodology, the theoretical framework and finally the limitations and delimitations.

1.1. Problem Formulation

Has the widespread adoption of social media had an effect on political opinion, and if so, how might such effects have changed or provided new discoursal methods of accruing political power?

1.2. Problem Area

The United States of America is one of six permanent members in the United Nations Security Council (U.N. Charter art. 5, para. 23), the stated objective of the UNSC is to maintain international peace and security, this includes tasks such as authorizing international sanctions, military action and establishing peacekeeping operations (U.N. Charter art. 5, para. 24). The current elected president of the United States of America chooses and nominates an ambassador to represent the government in the United Nations Security Council. On the same note, the United States of America is also a founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, whose fundamental objective and purpose is to protect the liberty and security of its members, this is done with political and military means (NATO, 2010, p. 6). Therefore the US election is extremely relevant on a global scale. We have chosen our research area, because the victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 American election has global consequences. We hypothesize that an important factor in his victory was his and his and his followers use of social media as Confessore and Hakim (2017) theorized and the echo chambers, a term Boutyline (2016) characterizes as a politically homogeneous grouping, that arose on social media sites. We also suspect that these changes in political discourse,

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will have far reaching consequences in the American, as well as the global, political climate for years to come. We aim to understand Donald Trump’s use of social media and how it affected his nomination and election as President of the United States of America. Polarization is a political partisan division, a trend that has become more evident over the last 50 years, as showcased by Bill Bishop (2004) in his book The Big Sort as both demographic ​ and political segregation into homophilous communities. We aim to determine whether or not said polarization has benefitted Trump’s social media campaign and if his online rhetoric has exasperated the political polarization in America. Social media, especially Twitter, has over the last decade evolved into a platform where the political candidates and their followers debate and critique mainstream media. The two presidential candidates in the 2016 election used Twitter as a mass communication tool (Enli 2017). Donald Trump has over 44 million followers on twitter, and he defines the purpose of his twitter use as "[...]the only way to get the truth out. Much of mainstream media has become a joke" (Donald ​ ​ Trump's Twitter, 13/12-2017). Twitter has over the last decade become a direct political news source for a big amount of the American population and an online political debating forum. The impact of Donald Trump's social media usage was quintessential to his victory in the 2016 presidential campaign (Enli, 2017). For this reason, the analysis of Donald Trump’s victorious political discourse strategy is important for future elections.

1.3. Analytical Strategy

Firstly we will investigate the polarization and divide in the United States of America and how this has given rise to Echo Chambers. ​ Then, we will use utilize Fairclough's critical discourse analysis model to analyse Trump’s use of social media, namely Twitter. Lastly we will discuss how Social Media attention correlates with election results, and how the scandals have affected Donald Trump’s political platform, and in relation to this, how he has handled the scandals he has encountered.

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1.4. Research Question

How did Donald Trump’s discoursal strategy on twitter during the selected scandal affect his political campaign?

1.5. Working Questions

Has polarization in America increased, and if so has that increase benefited Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign?

What characterized Donald Trump’s social media rhetoric during the John McCain scandal in July 2015, and what was the discoursal functions of said rhetoric?

How does social media attention correlate with popularity, and how has Donald Trump handled the scandals he has encountered in his rise to the Presidential position.

1.6. Methodology

1.6.1. Twitter Event

“From breaking news and entertainment to sports, politics, and everyday interests, when it happens in the world, it happens on Twitter. See all sides of the story. Join the conversation. Watch live streaming events.” (Twitter, 2017) ​ Twitter with its 330 million users is one of the largest social media platforms, (Statista, 2017) and according to Boutyline (p. 553, 2016), Twitter users consisted of 12% of USA’s adult population by 2012.

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Because of this, and its function as an immediate contact intermediary, it has changed communication in many aspect as well as the political, as it has granted actors a method to bypass traditional media gatekeepers (Conway et al; 2015) But as Conway et al (2015) points out with a reference to Groshek & Groshek (2013), trending topics on Twitter has a tendency to follow traditional media outlets news stream. Therefore we will in this paper look at how a political scandal is propagated first through traditional ​ media and later on through social media. We will utilize the term Twitter event to describe the political actor, in our case Donald J. ​ ​ Trump’s, twitter discourse following traditional medias revelation of a political scandal. We hypothesise that every tweet in the days following will be tainted by the scandal, and are therefore relevant to our discoursal analysis on this. Of course it is difficult to limit the scope in which a tweet is relevant, but the further we move away from the scandal, the less relevant a tweet will be to the Twitter event. ​ Donald Trump has an interesting discourse when handling scandals, and we had a difficult time choosing a specific case, but after much discussion we decided to limit ourselves to examining one twitter event, originating in the scandal following Donald Trumps 2015 comment on John ​ ​ McCain's status as a war hero (Politico, 2015). We have decided to analyse the twitter event ​ following this incident, as to better understand Donald Trump’s discoursal structure when tackling scandals.

1.6.2. Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis

In our project we will investigate whether or not there is a connection between Trump’s use social media and speeches, and an increase in polarization in society, and if so, how strong that correlation might be. The quantitative evidence for polarization is widely available, but we will have to find a way to analyse the discourse. First of we must analyse discourse within online communities, to determine the extent to which these communities have become more radicalized by polarization into echo chambers, and hopefully uncover the mindset behind the type of discourse we will discover. Secondly, we’ll have to identify the intent and functions of Donald Trump’s use of social media, particularly on Twitter.

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Critical Discourse Analysis has been chosen here for its relevance in sociocultural contexts (Fairclough, 1995: pp 1-2). CDA focuses on text, but Fairclough has a much broader view on what ​ ​ the concept of a text entails. Here is how he conceptualize it: “A text is traditionally understood to be a piece of written language - a whole ‘work’ such as a poem or a novel, or a relatively discrete part of a work such as a chapter. A rather broader conception has become common within discourse, so that, for example, the words used in a conversation (or their written transcription) constitute a text. In cultural analysis, by contrast, texts do not need to be linguistic at all; any cultural artefact - a picture, a building, a piece of music - can be seen as a text.” (Fairclough, 1995: pp 4) ​ This flexible nature of Fairclough’s CDA is needed for a comprehensive analysis of the many discursive variables associated with the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. Another feature of Fairclough’s CDA is the openness towards integrating levels of analysis that most discourse analysts would not. An example of this is the inclusion of audience reception. According to Fairclough, the reaction from the consumer of the text can be an important variable in interpreting the sociocultural presuppositions and implications of the producer of the text (Fairclough, 1995: pp 9). While Fairclough’s 1995 book uses audiences of television shows as an example, a much more salient example today would be social media. It could be argued that people’s increased ability to respond, react and engage with the produced texts, makes audience reception much more important. This is hugely relevant to our project, as the link between Trump’s use of social media and the reaction and interpretation of individuals and social groups is exactly what we want to shed light on.

All of this makes the application of Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis appropriate for our project.

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1.7. Theoretical framework

1.7.1. The Connection Between Twitter Events, Scandals and Discourse Analysis

One of the primary things we are interested in exploring and one of the central elements of Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis, is the reproduction of discoursal macro-structures (Fairclough: 1995, pp. 43). Any institution is bound to have a number of ideological discoursal formations (IDF’s) struggling for power within that institution. When one IDF becomes dominant certain ideological presuppositions associated with that IDF become increasingly opaque, because they are perceived as commonsensical to the subjects of the discourse. Socioculturally, this has real ideological effects on these subjects who, by participating in this opaque ideological discourse, reinforce the macro-structure of the dominant IDF. This structure could be described as reproductive, in that it changes over time as a product of the previous ideological presuppositions which, in turn, becomes a prerequisite for further transformation in the future. (Fairclough, 1995: pp. 36-45) Now, clearly a country as big and divided as the U.S. is a complicated web of numerous micro-structures and ideological formations. However these micro-structures make up larger macro-structures that can be analysed at the level of the entire nation. Any presidential campaign is faced with pressures shaping the candidate’s discourse, however, some variables in the political climate, during the last general election, such as the degree to which the country was divided, might have resulted in a substantially different discoursal landscape, presenting new and different opportunities and restrictions, and requiring novel strategies for dominating the discourse and accrewing power. In the next segment we will discuss the discoursal pressures of a presidential campaign and how they uniquely apply to Trump.

1.7.2. Discoursal Pressures in Politics

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Any discoursal text is subject to certain pressures based on social conditions. These basic pressures are important to understand the function of discourse, and are relevant to Trump’s campaign in ways that will be elaborated upon further down. The pressures are described by Fairclough as centripedal and centrifugal pressures. (Fairclough, 1995: pp 7-8) ​ ​ ​ ​ Centripedal pressures (CPP’s) are normative and repetitive. They partly consist of the discoursal facet of society, which is described as the combined socially available resources. They are what constrains the producer of the discourse to conform to the norms and conventions of society. An obvious and fundamental example of a centripedal pressure would be, that a text intended for an English-speaking audience would have to be produced in English. Centrifugal pressures (CFP’s) are characterized as situational and creative/transformative. It is the only tool at the disposal of the producer of a discoursal text to attempt renegotiating certain social relations, including their own identity, by elucidating contradictions in sociocultural presuppositions and norms. There is immense variation in how much weight these types of pressures carry in discoursal texts. It can be described as a spectrum ranging from normative (CPP’s being dominant) to creative (CFP’s being dominant). (Fairclough, 1995: pp 7-8)

The CPP’s in a presidential campaign are clear. Traditionally there is an expectation of the president to share a number of common values and to adhere to social norms and traditions such as religious rituals (citation needed). A presidential campaign, however, is also generally faced with CFP’s, like expectations of political reform that are in some way ideologically or pragmatically divergent from the previous administration. A concern one might raise, is that these “centrifugal” pressures are really just masked centripetal pressures, in that the policies of the presidential candidate will have to represent enough of a majority of the population to be elected. This involves finding the “perfect” balance between adherence to tradition, and to reform. From this perspective, the individual candidate’s capacity to produce authentic and transformative discourse is heavily constrained, even if the balance (in terms of public opinion) is tilted heavily towards reform. In this view, at the level of analysis of the individual candidate, the pressures could overwhelmingly be described as centripetal.

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One interesting thing about this election cycle is that the “mood” of the population has widely been described as anti-establishment, and characterized by people yearning for “authentic” candidates (citation needed). This could be interpreted as an implication that the population has become at least unconsciously aware of the centripetal/centrifugal dynamic. The way Trump seemed to establish an image of authenticity, was not necessarily by pushing radical reform, but has generally been described as making extremely provocative and often contradictory statements, leading him to perpetually be involved in scandals. Columnist and author John Baldoni describes Trump’s particular strain of supposed authenticity as such: “Such thoughtless – which comes across as telling it like it is -- is deemed endearing to Trump followers. It has helped to propel Trump to the top of the polls in the Republican presidential primary season. Trump is skilled at connecting with an audience because he can read their mood and respond accordingly. The unscripted Trump says whatever he likes and when wrong never apologizes. He merely attacks those who would attempt to correct the record.” (Baldoni, 2016) ​ Insofar as this view of Trump’s “authenticity” is accurate, it suggests that the CPP’s, to a degree, has been reduced in this election cycle leading CFP’s to be more dominant in the discourse. This might explain why the scandals associated with Trump’s campaign, do not seem to have been particularly detrimental to his objectives, and might have had the exact opposite effect. When analysing the individual tweets, we will further access whether or not this way of defining the alleged “authenticity” of Trump is accurate, as well as identifying how and where the specific texts are constrained by discoursal pressures, and how they assist in maintaining reproductive structures of discourse over time. To identify the reproductive macrostructures of the discourse, we will have to look at the discoursal evolution of Trump’s social media use during his campaign. By analysing the discoursal similarities and differences between twitter events following two similar scandals, one in the ​ beginning of his campaign, and one in the end, we will attempt to identify macrostructures, whether or not Trump utilizes ideological speech maintained by an IDF consisting of his supporters, as well as the discoursal pressures (CPP’s and CFP’s). These attributes of Trump’s discourse will provide a useful overview of the functions of Trump’s rhetoric on social media, and may even have a role in

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elucidating the extent to which said functions helped secure his final victory in the general election.

In conclusion, we have in this segment established that ideological discoursal formations (IDF’s) are groups of individuals ideologically categorized in social institutions which they struggle to accrue influence over. IDF’s produce structures of discourse that reproduce, and when an IDF becomes dominant, the ideological macrostructures becomes “commonsensical” and opaque. These structures can be described as reproductive in that they affect the subjects of the institution ideologically, causing new iterations of the structure to come into being, as the IDF “enforcing” the structure becomes more dominant. We intend to identify these reproductive discoursal structures by looking at two seperate twitter ​ events, to determine the evolution and functions of Trump’s discourse. ​

Furthermore, we have defined the concepts of centripetal (CPP) and centrifugal (CFP) ​ ​ ​ pressures, CPP’s being pressures based on the norms and social conventions of society that constrains the CFP’s which are the creative pressures originating in the producer of the text, often challenging existing macro-structures maintained by dominant IDF’s. We have observed that the American population in the 2016 election, in their yearning for an “authentic and anti-establishment” candidate, might be more accepting of CFP’s being more dominant in political discourse than usual. This could be part of the reason why constant scandals did not seem to be detrimental to Trump’s campaign. It also explains why we are using scandals as the basis for the twitter events we have selected. ​

1.7.3. Echo Chambers

Boutyline and Willer (2016), theorized that right-wing conservatives and ideological extremist would tend to engage in more homophilous social networks than liberals and moderates respectively. They tested their hypothesis through an examination of the Twitter networks of about a quarter million politically engaged americans. (p. 555)

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Central to their research is the term ego network which describes the network extending ​ towards a single social media profile.

Their findings supported their hypothesis significantly, and they concluded that the ego networks of right-wing conservatives and ideological extremist tended towards great homophily. These homophilous networks, which they defined as echo chambers due to their tendency to reverberate with the same statements throughout spreading from ego network to ego network like a wildfire. (Boutyline and Willer, 2016)

The reasoning Boutyline and Willer (2016) gives for why specifically these groupings tend to converge into echo chambers more often is their predisposition towards certainty, to back this up ​ ​ they reference in text to findings made by political psychologist that show that right-wing conservatives and ideological extremist tend to value certainty higher than liberals and moderates respectively.

In an echo chamber there is a natural filtering of dissenting voices, granting characters involved in these networks a more homogenous internal language that in turn fosters political extremism as Sunstein (2001) expressed.

1.7.4. Polarization

Possibly the most thoroughly covered topic that showcases political polarization in the United States, is on the topic of climate change. A clear demonstration of polarization was in 2011, when Mitt Romney his support of the notion of climate change and how that move was declared by many conservative news outlets as political suicide (Fisher et. Al., 2013). This case illustrates a clear segregation in population in who supports and acknowledges environmental issues as a problem and those who does not.

Political polarization or ideological polarization can for one instance be seen in voting patterns and voting segregations as described by Bill Bishop (2004), he argues that political segregation is increasing and has been increasing over the last 40 years. An example given in his book The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart is the sheer ​ ​ amount of people living in counties where the large majority of votes go to one specific candidate in

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a presidential election, when Jimmy Carter won the presidential election 26.8% of the population lived in landslide counties, George Bush' presidential electoral win in 2000 saw 45.3% and in 2004 that number rose to 48.3% (Bishop 2004). These politically homogenous communities obviously lack diversity of opinion and could therefore reinforce extremist ideas (Sunstein, 2001, p. 73). All extremist ideas are not created equally and some definitively for the greater good. In some cases "group polarization helped fuel many movements of great value" (Sunstein, 2001, p. 75) both civil ​ ​ rights movements against slavery and those against sex inequality were spawned in a homophilous community (ibid).

Political polarization is not only seen in the level of disagreement on certain topics, it is also apparent in the way what one party views and describes the other. In Gentzkow's analysis of political polarization from 2016, he highlights a Pew Survey from 2008 on cross-party hostility, where it is showcased that the parties dismay towards the opposite party has increased over the last 50 years (Gentzkow, 2016, pp. 15).

1.8. Limitations and Delimitations

While our interest in this project lies within macro-discoursal structures within social media in election periods, we have had to limit ourselves drastically to fit it within one project. We decided to focus on the discoursal structure of scandals, and how they are handled by the subject of the scandal on social media platforms. We then decided to focus on Donald Trump, and the Twitter event of July 2015, when Donald Trump belittled John McCain’s effort in the Vietnam war. As the internet world moves quickly, the data gathered from social media dates quicker than regularly, and by the time of our publication, our study might already have dated, or another more interesting scandal might have reared its head. Furthermore, as DiGrazia et al (2013) mentions, when viewing social media data, one tends to see a biased and unrepresentative sample of the actual population, as many factors contribute to the usage and activity on social media networks. Therefore, our study concerning Donald Trump’s social media discourse concerning scandals might not necessarily translate to real world consequences.

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2.0. State of the Art.

2.1. Literature Review.

Kellner attempts to characterize Donald Trump as an individual, as well as assess some of the strategies he used to win the 2016 election. It also alludes to the dangers of authoritarian fascism, and points out some of the similarities between the rise of Trump, and the rise of fascist ideology, particularly in Germany during the 1930’s. (Kellner 2016; P. 19; P. 29). To delve into how Trump used social media, and particularly Twitter, to get the mainstream news outlets, operating on more orthodox platforms such as TV and newspapers, to get him more publicity, even among the segments of the population that didn’t have access to new media. (Kellner 2016; P. 3; P. 4) it is important to review what factors really effectivised his twitter usage. Alcott & Gentzkow discusses in their paper "Social Media and Fake News in the 2016 election" from 2017 the ‘economics of fake ​ ​ ​ news’, in which they create a model of the media, what that media produces and who benefits from it. Alcott & Gentzkow concludes that “fake news” articles originate from several websites, referring to investigations done by BuzzFeed and the Guardian, it is also discovered that these pages are run by teenagers in small towns (Alcott & Gentzkow 2017, p.217). When empirical data on consumption of "fake news" prior to the election is collected by Alcott & Gentzkow, it is collected through a 1200-person post-election online survey and a database of 156 election related news stories that was categorized as fake news by fact-checking websites. Based on the survey it is suggested that social media platforms may be conductive to fake news (Alcott & Gentzkow 2017, p.221) and that demographic factors such as education does not affect the effectiveness, in terms of the rate of news spreading. Even though this method of research has been denounced by Yeager et al. (2011) the paper insists on the opposite, Alcott & Gentzkow developed a mathematical presentation of the online survey, which presents the variability in belief between different demographic factors (Table 1, Alcott & Gentzkow 2017, "What Predicts

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Correct Beliefs about News Headlines?", p.229). Alcott & Gentzkow (2017) seeks to understand the importance of social media in political scene and the possible impacts of fake news on voting patterns in the 2016 election. Even though it is concluded that they do not provide an assessment of this claim one way or another it does present evidence that the level of exposure to fake news and that it can be used as a political tool (Alcott & Gentzkow 2017, p.232), Understanding the importance of social media usage in terms of a political campaign is a modern phenomenon, In republic.com (2001) Sunstein outlines the developments there has been on the internet and on social media, existing at the time, and from that framework outlines several theories on how it might evolve. In a heterogenous democratic society, there is a need for ‘unanticipated encounters’ to create shared experiences among the citizens of a given nation. (Sunstein, 2001, p. 8-9) For many years traditional media have had the function of the ‘General intelligence intermediary’ that has forced input from individuals with differing opinions upon most consumers. Which in turn has prevented group fragmentation, by these shared experiences that enlighten one to the other side of a given case. (ibid, p. 10-11)The internet has changed many of these things, with the increased flow and availability of information we have been forced to excessively filter our information input to prevent an information overload. (ibid, p. 56-57) Of course filtering is nothing new, even in the days of newspaper and radio consumers have filtered their media-input to suit their needs, (ibid, p. 10-11) but with the introduction of these new media forms, we, the consumer, have gained additional tools to filter our informational input, (ibid, p. 7, p. 44, p. 55) for example if one is interested in economic news, one would have had to subscribe to a newspaper like The Economist to receive the news ​ ​ desired, and while this is a paper with a narrow focus the reader would still occasionally run into diverse articles that would broaden their horizon. These days people subscribe to a newsfeed that includes only articles tagged with a set of pre-chosen keywords, for example only receiving news related to the companies deemed interesting for the individual. The central feature of the internet is instant global communication, a feature that has allowed fringe communities to gather and discuss their unique experiences. (ibid, p. 17-18, p. 58-59) While this is in most regards a positive feature, this has also led to most discussion groups and internet fora becoming mainly homogenous communities, where extremism is

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often fostered. (ibid, p. 52-53, p. 65-67) This extremism propagates itself as there are no strong counterarguments to the general political stance of the grouping. (ibid, p. 72). Due to the echo chamber effect, we have seen that these diverse political fora have all created their own internal language patterns, (ibid, p. 48-49) and unique cyber cascades, i.e. ​ ​ rumours or the term now used: fake news, propagated through internet fora (ibid p. 49, p. 80-81, p. 83). This has led to further fragmentation and division between the wings. (ibid, p. 48-49, 52-53)

High analyses Trump’s discourse, and concludes that people in general does not trust the establishment, therefore Trump succeeds with his anti-establishment label (High, 2016, p. 44-45). Trump isn’t so structured in his speeches, he doesn't use a teleprompter. This makes Trump more trustworthy for a lot of voters (High, 2016, p.35). This is something we can use in our assignment, because we want to find out how he utilized social media in his media strategy. To discuss how politicians can reach a larger audience, and how we can get more people voting.Trump creates a positive picture of himself with his discourse, and negative against those who are against him, kind of an us against them mentality (High, 2016, p. 44). As Gentzkow (2016; P. 3-5) points out, there has been a great academic disagreement as to whether the United States of America’s population has become increasingly polarized over the years. But in the following pages (Gentzkow 2016; P. 6-17) he paints a picture of a polarized America, by way of surveys that established party supporters were encouraged to take. These surveys showed an increased hostility between Democrats and Republicans, as stated below in his own words: “Perhaps the most ​ disturbing fact is that politics has become increasingly personal. We don’t see those on the other side as well-meaning people who happen to hold different opinions or to weight conflicting goals differently. We see them as unintelligent and selfish, with views so perverse that they can be explained only by unimaginable cluelessness, or a dark ulterior motive. Either way, they pose a grave threat to our nation.”(Gentzkow 2016; P. 17). ​ Furthermore, Gentzkow (2016) argues that this polarization, though only providing circumstantial evidence for it, was driven by the internet becoming a mass phenomenon. (P. 18). Gentzkow (2016) then goes onto counter argue his previous “[...] ​ Internet-as-a-villain narrative” (Ibid. P. 19) by pulling up three points. His first point ​

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being that digital information sources makes up a smaller percentage of the average Americans news intake, than many commentators think, a mere 8% according to (Ibid. P. 19) source, a McKinsey report from 2012. Secondly, he refers to his own article co-authored with Shapiro in 2011, where they stated that fewer Americans than expected strictly consumed partisan news outlets, i.e. strictly watching CNN or Fox News. Thirdly he discusses whether this evident polarization is something uniquely created by the rise of the internet, as it is impossible to make a comparative study to a world where the internet never had been invented. (Ibid P. 20)

Maffesoli explains the ambience from various sociologists, “The constant interplay ​ between the growing massification and the development of micro groups, which I shall call tribes”. These sociologists, from the 20th century explainins the founding tension ​ ​ characterizing sociality. It is believed that the people in this period are subject of a logic of an identity, and without precious goals, they are not subject of an historical movement. Therefore Maffesoli uses the term tribes to describe the masses. Maffesoli uses tribes as a metaphor to account for the process of deindividuation. The old conventional way of looking at society is flawed because of mass culture and the way it is fragmented and disintegrated into tribes (Maffesoli, 1996, p.6). To illustrate it Maffesoli developed this model:

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The model (Appendix 1) is a tool to explain the new way of understanding society and mass culture. Within modernity the individual would be part of a contractual group, which would be much harder to get out of. This could be the church. This is a society in which it would be very hard to get out off. With Maffesoli’ way of looking at the society, it’s much easier to change tribe, therefore the masses are way more unstable (ibid, p.6-7). This way of looking at the society, will be very useful for us in our project

2.2. Character Background.

We wish to briefly disclose who Donald Trump and John McCain is. We wish to describe their backgrounds and enlighten the reader with the knowledge of who these characters are and what they have achieved previously in their life.

2.2.1. Donald Trump.

Donald J. Trump is the 45th president of the United States of America. He announced his ​ candidacy on the 16th of June 2015, and accepted the republican nomination for President of the ​ United States of America in July 2016 after he successfully defeated seventeen different Republican primaries. He was elected president on November 2016, when he defeated the Democrats nominee Hillary Clinton, after receiving more then 62 million votes (The White House, n.d). He graduated from The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton business school in 1968, his ​ goal at the time was to become the king of New York real estate. He started his real estate career with a loan of 2 million dollars from his dad (Viser, 2015). Today he’s considered a real estate mogul. He was also famous for being a former reality star and an accomplished writer before ​ elected president. Forbes estimated his net worth to 3.1 billion dollars in February 2018. 2 billion ​ dollars out of the 3.1 billion dollars net worth was according to Forbes real estate (Forbes.com, ​ 2018). His net worth was important through out his campaign because of the fact that he claimed to be anti-establishment, self-funding and not controlled by lobbyist (Trump, 2016)

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Donald Trump was also a well-known reality star before being elected president. He is most known for playing himself in Home Alone 2 and the reality-tv game show The Apprentice. The ​ contestant in the game show competed for a job as Donald Trump’s apprentice (IMDb, 2017). It was also in The Apprentice Donald J. Trump become famous for his bombastic speech patterns, ​ such as the famous quote You’re Fired (Nordic.businessinsider.com, 2017). ​ ​ Donald J. Trump is also well known for being an accomplished writer. He is written fourteen bestsellers, including the best seller The Art of the Deal (The White House, n.d). ​ Donald Trump himself claimed the book was the no. 1 selling business book of all time, however politifact did rate that statement as false in 2015 (Long, 2016) ​ ​

2.2.2. John McCain.

John McCain is a republican senator. He was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Arizona in 1982, he was then elected to the United States senate in 1986. He is the son and grandson of distinguished Navy admirals and has served in the military himself. Politically he believes in lower taxes and is very pro military (Country first PAC, 2017). He was the Republican party’s nominee for president in 2008, but was defeated by Barack Obama (Wilentz, 2017).

He graduated United States Naval Academy in 1958 (Wilentz, 2017), he also graduated flight school ​ in 1960. He started serving in the Navy in 1958, just after graduating (biography, 2017). He volunteered for combat duty after the outbreak of the Vietnam War. In Under his service, his A-4

th Skyhawk jet was hit by friendly fire on June the 29 ,​ he survived but was seriously injured. The ​ accident toke the life of 134 persons. He was again unlucky on October the 26th 1967 when his ​ plane was shot down over the northern Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, he broke his arms and one of his legs during the crash. He was captured after his crash, and taken prisoner. His captures figured out he was the son of high ranking-officer in the Navy, and offered early release several times. McCain didn’t wish to violate the military code of conduct, because he believed that the Vietnamese would use him for propaganda purposes. He ended up spending five and a half year in various prisons in Vietnam, and was a victim of torture before being released on March the 14th ​ 1973. McCain was honored with a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, Purple Heart and a Distinguished Flying Cross for his service in the Vietnam War. After rehab, McCain returned to the military but

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his injuries made it impossible for him to advance in the Navy . This lead to his onset in politics in 1976, he has been in the senate ever since his first election in 1986 (biography, 2017).

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3.0. American Polarization, Echo chambers, and the Conservative Voter Base.

In this chapter we will investigate whether the United States of America has been the subject of Polarization in recent years, and if so how this might have affected Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016.

3.1. Polarization and Echo Chambers in the United States of America

“Since the 1970s, ideological polarization has increased dramatically among the mass

public in the United States. . . . There are now large differences in outlook between

Democrats and Republicans, between red state voters and blue state voters, and between

religious voters and secular voters. These divisions are not confined to a small

minority of activists-they involve a large segment of the public and the deepest divisions

are found among the most interested, informed, and active citizens.”

-Gentzkow (2016) citing Abramowitz and Saunders (2008, p. 542) ​

As we have previously delved into, the American population has exhibited tendencies towards political and ideological polarization in recent years. (Gentzkow, 2016) Evidence tending towards this started appearing years ago, but since the turn of the millenia they seem to have developed dramatically (see figure 2), in this chapter we will attempt to describe this polarization and how this would have benefited Donald Trump during the 2016 election.

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Showcase of the distribution of Democrats and Republicans on a 1-10 scale of political values by engagement.

Figure 2 (Pew Research Center, 2014)

As evident in figure 2 (Appendix 2), the politically engaged demographic in the United States of America has become more segregated in terms of which political wing they identify and align themselves with. This 20 year divisional development is a strong indicator of political polarization in the population, and we hypothesize that this polarization is directly linked with the technological evolution of social media and networking platforms such as Twitter especially.

The selective nature of information streams on social media is the causation of divisional homophilous networks described as ego networks, (Boutyline and Willer, 2016) (Sunstein, 2001) which entails that the individual Twitter user only receives and subscribes to other accounts that align with their own political views and affiliation. These ego networks enforces the existing political views and standpoints of the user as conservatives and ideological extremists tend to have less frequent opposing viewpoints penetrating their echo chamber. (Pew Research center, 2014, p. 8)

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Figure 3 (Pew Research center, 2014)

Figure 3 (Appendix 3) is build upon a questionnaire with the purpose to determine ideological echo chambers. The findings show that out of the politically consistently conservative oriented participants 50% and 29% of the mostly conservative oriented finds it important to live in an area where people share political views, the accumulation of politically like minded people in an area is by Gentzkow (2016) and Bishop (2004) a strong contributing factor towards political echo chambers. Gentzkow (2016) argues that these politically homogeneous communities is creating great hostility towards the opposing party and their supporters. A Pew Research Center (2014) survey of democratic supporters and republican supporters and their attitude towards the opposing party showed that the partisan gap had more than doubled in the last 20 years. In 1994, 16% of democratic supporters and 17% of republican supporters answered that their attitude towards the opposing party and their supporters was very unfavorable, in 2014 that same parametre has more than doubled to 38% for democratic supporters and 43% for republican supporters.

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Figure 4 (Gould, S, 2016)

3.2. Voter Turnout and Political Affiliation.

As we see here on figure 4 (Appendix 4), a table done by Edison Research center for the Business Insider, Donald Trump’s main voting platform consisted primarily of Conservatives, a staggering 81% of conservatives voted for him, compared to the 41% moderates and 10% liberals. And since that both Boutyline and Willer (2016), and the Pew Research Center (2014) have established consistently conservative voters, tend to create homophilous ego networks, (See figure 3 for reference) we can extrapolate from this that a large amount of Trump voters, the conservative portion, would tend towards political isolation by way of echo chambering ego networks.

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This is something that can also be backed up with Maffesoli’ theory of tribalism. In his book ‘the time of the tribes’, Maffesoli argues that we have seen a change in mass culture since thinkers from the start of the 20th century. What he argues is that nowadays, it is much easier to change tribes. The masses are more fragmented, and people tend to seek communities with their own views (Maffesoli, 1996, p. 6-7). This means that people with different ideologies often won’t be in the same social circles, at the same time, it has become easier to change tribe. He also claims though, that people tend to join tribes which confirms them in their beliefs (Maffesoli, p.7, 1996). This backs up the figures from Pew Research Center (2014), Bishop (2004) and Gentzkow (2016). The question is however why. If we look at the model shown in the State of the Art (Appendix 1), we can see the shift in mass culture as described by Maffesoli. Back in the days we had communities, which can be described as contractual groups. This means that people rarely would find a new social circle. They were often born into these social circles, and their beliefs was not challenged often. An example could be the church (Maffesoli, 1996, p. 7). If we look at Maffesoli’ description of today's society, we can see that our communities no more are contractual groups. A individual is no longer just a function of an political-economical organization, but more a person of the masses with a role to play. A role which isn’t as firm as in previous societies. This means that the person belongs to affectuel tribes, which is much easier to shift from. It’s easier in today's society to change circle of associates to people who shares your own viewpoints because of this. (Maffesoli, figure, 1996).

In conclusion, we have established that polarization has been a phenomenon in the United States of America for quite some time, and that his phenomenon has propagated itself to new heights in recent years, and hostility has been rising between Conservatives and Liberals. (Gentzkow, 2016)

Furthermore, we have concluded from research done by the Pew Research Center (2014), Bishop (2004), and Gentzkow (2016) that Conservatives are more likely to isolate themselves within ideologically homophilous networks and construct ego networks that facilitate echo chambers, that are less likely to be penetrated by opposing views.

Therefore, as Donald Trump’s voter base mainly consists of Conservatives, (Gould, 2016) we can extrapolate that the voters who supported Donald Trump were less likely to encounter

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critique of his character and when encountering critique they would, due to their homogenous ego networks, have been able to discredit this new influx of information easier, as their ego networks have reverberated with defences of his character, and more importantly support for his situation.

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4.0. Discourse Analysis

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the discoursal functions of Trump’s social media rhetoric during the 2016 election. To do his we are examining one twitter event, it consists of the ​ ​ twitter posts made by Donald Trump, following the John McCain scandal caused by Donald Trump’s comment on war veterans..

The twitter event that we are looking at revolves around a scandal that occurred in July 2015, in the very beginning of Donald Trump’s campaign. The scandal involved denouncing John Mccain because he was captured as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, proclaiming that: “He’s not a war hero ... He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.” - Schreckinger (2015) citing Donald Trump. ​ The U.S. has historically held its military in very high esteem, and as late as 2013 pew research shows that a larger number of people consider members of the military to be “contributing a lot to society’s well-being”, than consider teachers and medical doctors (Pew Research Center's Religion & Public Life Project, 2013), and so it is of no surprise that the statements made by Trump would provoke a reaction from the public. We’re extracting the tweets from a website called TrumpTwitterArchive.com, which consists of a searchable database of all Trump’s tweets, including links to the tweets themselves.

The transcripts are presented as such:

1. Jul 18, 2015 12:58:18 PM Statement on John McCain- http://t.co/Nh0rJPeUNl [Twitter Web Client] link ​ ​ ​ 2. Jul 18, 2015 12:58:56 PM Just left Family Leadership Summit in Iowa, got a standing ovation from many wonderful

people. I will be back soon. [Twitter Web Client] link ​ ​ ​ 3. Jul 18, 2015 12:59:14 PM In addition to doing a lousy job in taking care of our Vets, John McCain let us down by losing to

Barack Obama in his run for President! [Twitter Web Client] link ​ ​ ​ 4. Jul 18, 2015 12:59:29 PM Captured or not, all our soldiers are heroes! [Twitter Web Client] link ​ ​ ​ 5. Jul 18, 2015 01:15:12 PM The Veterans of our country have been treated like third class citizens for many years... [Twitter ​ Web Client] link ​ ​ 6. Jul 18, 2015 01:15:19 PM ....John McCain has failed miserably to fix the situation and to make it possible for Veterans to

successfully manage their lives. [Twitter Web Client] link ​ ​ ​ 7. Jul 18, 2015 01:15:36 PM All he does is go on television is talk, talk, talk, but incapable of doing anything. [Twitter Web ​ Client] link ​ ​

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8. Jul 18, 2015 01:15:49 PM I will make this right for our great Vets! [Twitter Web Client] link ​ ​ ​ 9. Jul 18, 2015 01:16:26 PM It's a national embarrassment that an illegal immigrant can walk across the border and receive

free health care and one of our Veterans..... [Twitter Web Client] link ​ ​ ​ 10. Jul 18, 2015 01:16:32 PM ....that has served our country is put on a waiting list and gets no care. [Twitter Web Client] link ​ ​ ​ 11. Jul 18, 2015 01:51:48 PM I have a proven track record supporting our Veterans. Veterans deserve universal access to care.

VA scandal proves politicians are inept. [Twitter for BlackBerry] link ​ ​ ​ 12. Jul 18, 2015 03:18:21 PM Congrats to the new Gov. of Texas, @GregAbbott_TX, for taking a tough & bold stance at the

border. Should have been done long ago by Perry. [Twitter Web Client] link ​ ​ ​ 13. Jul 18, 2015 03:46:53 PM Why would anybody listen to @MittRomney? He lost an election that should have easily been

won against Obama. By the way,so did John McCain! [Twitter Web Client] link ​ ​ ​ 14. Jul 18, 2015 04:45:48 PM Via @fitsnews: “Donald Trump: John McCain Is ‘A Loser’” http://t.co/sgiETvdUqi [Twitter ​ Web Client] link ​ ​ 15. Jul 18, 2015 06:18:24 PM One of the reasons I am no fan of John McCain is that our Vets are being treated so badly by

him and the politicians. I will fix VA quickly. [Twitter Web Client] link ​ ​ ​ 16. Jul 18, 2015 11:19:30 PM Wow, @SharylAttkisson just wrote the definitive piece on what I said about John McCain

https://t.co/P1dxTmeCmQ [Twitter Web Client] link ​ ​ ​ 17. Jul 18, 2015 11:38:51 PM "@deannecox777: @SharylAttkisson Because she shoots straight like you do, Mr Trump. No

bullsh!t. Just TRUTH! #FactCheck #QuitHatin'" [Twitter for Android] link ​ ​ ​ 18. Jul 18, 2015 11:38:59 PM "@sloopjohnb15: @realDonaldTrump @SharylAttkisson I'm on the #TrumpTrain2016" [Twitter ​ for Android] link ​ ​ 19. Jul 18, 2015 11:39:16 PM "@amsardina: @realDonaldTrump @SharylAttkisson kick there ass Trump" [Twitter for ​ Android] link ​ ​ 20. Jul 18, 2015 11:39:55 PM "@dunn_cheri: @SharylAttkisson Mr Trump the only one telling the truth. Liberals can't stand

the fact that your are leading in the poll" [Twitter for Android] link ​ ​ ​ 21. Jul 18, 2015 11:42:01 PM "@mwood_79: @SharylAttkisson Why do they attack Mr Trump? Because he has something they dont. The ability of truth! Trump is here!" [Twitter for Android] ​

(Trumptwitterarchive.com, 2017)

The very first tweet is also the first one to directly address the scandal. It refers to a statement on his Facebook account, presumably because of the character limitation on Twitter. The statement is as follows: “I am not a fan of John McCain because he has done so little for our Veterans and he should know better than anybody what the Veterans need, especially in regards to the VA. He is yet another all talk, no action politician who spends too much time on television and not enough time doing his job and helping the Vets. He is also allowing our military to

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decrease substantially in size and strength, something which should never be allowed to happen.

Furthermore, he was extremely disrespectful to the thousands upon thousands of people, many of whom happen to be his constituents, that came to listen to me speak about illegal immigration in Phoenix last week by calling them "crazies".

These were not "crazies"---these were great American citizens.

I have great respect for all those who serve in our military including those that weren't captured and are also heroes.

I want to strengthen our military and take care of our Veterans. I want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN especially for those that serve to protect our freedom. I am fighting for our Veterans!” - (Trump, 2015)

While this is not exactly on Twitter, we still consider it part of his discourse on twitter, as that is where he referred to this statement from. It is worth noting that this is one of the only examples in his election we have encountered this behavior of linking to other platforms for making a statement. The first notable thing that happens in this statement is a strategy that seems apparent all throughout this Twitter event - deflection. The first two sentences emphasizes how John Mccain himself, according to Trump, has acted in ways that were disrespectful towards veterans and made conditions worse for them. The ways in which he condemns McCain over the course of the text are: 1) Explicitly accusing him of implementing policies that, according to Trump, are detrimental to the overall well being of veterans despite being a veteran himself, which in Trump’s view exacerbates the hypocrisy and moral failure of his actions. 2) Explicitly stating that McCain “is yet another all talk, no action politician who spends too ​ ​ much time on television”. Implying that Mccain is more interested in political publicity, than ​ he is in actually improving conditions for veterans. Also implicit in the choice of language of “yet another”, is the presupposition that being an “all talk, no action politician” is ​ ​ ​ something that characterizes the majority of the established political class, that Trump claims to want to replace. This elucidates suggestions of a discoursal power struggle

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between competing Ideological Discoursal Formations (IDF’s), i.e. establishment Republicans and the explicitly self-proclaimed anti-establishment Republicans who are behind Trump. 3) Claiming that Mccain has allowed the military to “decrease substantially in size and ​ strength”, which may be a way of persuading American conservatives who ​ disproportionately holds the military in very high regard (Pew Research Center's Religion & ​ Public Life Project, 2013), and who, to a substantially larger degree than the liberal left, will prioritize order and security (Hirsh et al., 2010), both of these being values that the military aim to protect. He also mentions that a decrease in the size of the military is “something ​ which should never be allowed to happen”, which could be considered a highly ideological ​ presupposition, that is much more common in discourse on the establishment neo-conservative end of the spectrum. This could be interpreted as Trump participating in a discoursal macro-structure of an opposing IDF, in order to appeal to the patriotism and appreciation for the military so deeply ingrained in many Republicans. A statement like this suggests that Trump is giving in to centripetal pressures (CPP’s) by adapting to social conventions and norms, and thus tempering the centrifugal pressures (CFP’s). 4) Expressing discontent about Mccain calling Trump supporters that showed up to a rally “crazies”, saying these people are “great American citizens” and many of them his own constituents, implying that the people McCain want to influence are on Trump's side. True or not, this type of discourse creates a narrative of an energetic and growing IDF, something that Trump and his base will explicitly label high energy throughout the campaign. ​ ​ 5) In saying that he has “great respect for all those who serve in our military including those ​ that weren't captured and are also heroes”, he does subtlety go back on the statement he ​ made during the interview, but instead of doing it in a way that makes him look defensive, he makes the implication that Mccain and the people criticizing Trump only have respect for ​ ​ people who were captured, while Trump respects everyone serving in the military as heroes. ​ This paints a picture of Trump that makes him look more like an authentic patriot. It also makes him look like someone who is on the offense, not the defense.

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He concludes that he wants a stronger military and “take care of our veterans”. At the end he proclaims with capital letters that he want to “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN”, a catchphrase first used by Ronald Reagan during his presidential campaign (I Agree to See, 2017). Ronald Reagan is very popular with conservatives to this day, and his popularity has only grown since he came out of office. The capital letters once again imply a high energy reformist agenda. Implicit in ​ “great again” is the presupposition that America used to be great, but is not anymore. ​

His next tweet reads: “Just left Family Leadership Summit in Iowa, got a standing ovation from many wonderful ​ people. I will be back soon.” Here Trump is appealing to family values, with is another centripedal pressure that all politicians tend to appeal to, but that is particularly important to the mainstream conservative and Republican voter base, which purports to stand for ‘family values’ (GOP.com, 2018). This is a unifying and largely inconsequential statement, that might appeal to the same people who were offended over his comments about John Mccain. He is also stating that he got a standing ovation from the population here, insinuating that he is still well-liked amongst his voterbase, and that the pushback from some conservatives, over his comments, are largely unreasonable.

The next tweet reads: “In addition to doing a lousy job in taking care of our Vets, John McCain let us down by losing to ​ Barack Obama in his run for President!” Here, Trump is doubling down on his criticism of John McCain, stating once again that his policies are bad for the veterans, and that he “let the people down” by losing the election to Barack Obama in 2008. As stated previously, there would usually be substantial centripedal pressure from the IDF consisting of conservatives against criticizing a veteran after a scandal like that, but in this election centrifugal pressures seem to be able to flourish more. It is conceivable that another, more transgressive IDF is growing, and thus dictating new discourse, contributing to a transformation of the discoursal facet. In the following tweet he quite clearly walks back at his statement, presumably in an attempt to appease the traditional voterbase.

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This discoursal dynamic continues for the next series of tweets, where he describes the harm that McCain’s policies on veterans has done, that they cannot manage their lives properly because of him, and that he is only looking for publicity, framing McCain as a career politician who is part of the much criticized political elite/establishment. He then attempts once again to frame the issue in a light that is favorable to him by tweeting:

“It's a national embarrassment that an illegal immigrant can walk across the border and receive free health care and one of our Veterans [...] that has served our country is put on a waiting list and gets no care.”

The first thing Trump does here is to criticize the state of the country, saying that the whole ordeal is a national tragedy. This reinforces the ideological presupposition, echoed in his slogan ​ ​ “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN”, that the country used to be great, but is not anymore. It is a ​ ​ transgressive and traditionalist sentiment simultaneously, attractive to a wide range of IDF’s including nationalists/patriots, conservative reformists, economic leftists and even neo-conservatives. It is a presupposition so broad and void of substance, that it can be applied on top of many worldviews, and thus one that Trump is interested in reproducing. Towards the end of the twitter event, Trump retweets a number of people’s tweets that are favorable towards him, repeatedly pointing out that Trump is “telling the truth” and framing the opposition as untruthful and spiteful. This seems to be done to preserve the support of his base, by reproducing discourse that will strengthen the ideological formations that are useful for him.

In conclusion, the data we have collected suggests a strategy of deflection, and is characterized by a behavior of ‘doubling down’ criticism of John McCain, while still going back on the statement that he was not a hero because he got captured. We have identified a dynamic of transgressiveness in Trump statements, that could suggest an acceptance of the proliferation of centrifugal discourse. This corresponds with the anti-establishment mood that we have found to characterize the current political climate. The acceptance of transgressive utterances might be a sign of a society that is ripe for cultural change, possibly because of the polarization, fragmenting the population into echo-chambers that may each impose harsh centripetal pressures on their respective

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in-groups, but may unite across echo-chambers, when they are presented with a lesser of two evils dichotomy. We have found that Donald Trump’s use of language was constructed in such a way, as to maximize support across several ideological formations. As discussed earlier, one way to interpret the data, is that the populace is accepting of centrifugal behavior, but another way to interpret it, is that the centripetal pressures have simply changed to encompass a new political environment that has other demands, such as an anti-establishment sentiment, that Donald Trump simply took advantage of, by being transgressive and then using the publicity to reproduce the discourse that reinforces his narrative.

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5.0. Discussion

In this chapter we will investigate the correlation between Twitter usage and popularity patterns, discuss the usage of Twitter and other social media by the main candidates of the 2016 US election, and finally discuss the implication of Donald Trump’s handling of scandals.

5.1. Social Media Attention and Voting Patterns.

1 2 2010 2012 The figures (Appendix 5 and Appendix 6) shows a link between the amounts of tweet shares a candidate gets, and the candidates vote share. The figures adjusted R-squared values are both 0.92, which is well above 0.65 which you would normally need in social scientific connections to justify the relevance of the figure. In the figure, the red line is the function that explains the proportional link between tweet share and vote share best. The data used for the figures are extracted from the occurrence of republican names in tweets and vote share in the 2010 and 2012

1 Appendix 5 2 Appendix 6

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congressional election. Figure 1 are made with data from the 2010 congressional, figure 2 is made with data from the 2012 congressional election. (DiGrazia et. al. 2013)

3DiGrazia et. al. (2013) found a statistically significant correlation between the Twitter response received by candidates, in the 2010 and 2012 congressional elections, and the amount of votes received. This quantitative

3 Appendix 7

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research data is interesteresting when compared to the following data set from Pew Research Center’s Journalism Project (2016) (Appendix 7) which shows the responds to the different candidates for the 2016 election. It shows that all three candidates sampled, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, tends towards an equal usage of social media, but that Donald Trump had a significantly higher response rate. While a contributing factor to this pattern must be the higher number of followers, as at the time of the Pew Research Centers (2016) publication on this matter Donald Trump had around 10 million followers, while Hillary Clinton had 7 million and Bernie Sanders had 3 million. But even when considering this, Donald Trump had a much larger level of feedback than Hillary Clinton, while overshadowed by Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump’s popularity might be due to their tendency towards an anti-establishment platform, which notably found strong traction in the 2016 election. (Anderson, 2017) These anti-establishment IDF’s that found traction obviously reverberates strongly throughout social media, as both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders found disproportionally better feedback in the online community than Hillary Clinton did. What truly set the candidates social media strategy apart was their usage of the retweet button, while Bernie Sanders mainly retweeted conventional news media, and Hillary Clinton kept to retweeting her own Campaign account, Donald Trump primarily retweets the General Public, and as we discussed earlier (See chapter 4.0.) he uses this tactic to strengthen the discoursal structures surrounding his anti-establishment platform. 4

4 Appendix 8

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5.2. Scandals and Donald Trump.

Since we first set out on writing this project, other scandals involving Donald Trump have appeared, the “Stormy Daniels Scandal” (Waxman, 2018; Luckhurst, 2018) wherein it was revealed that Donald Trump allegedly had a brief affair with the Adult Film star Stormy Daniels in 2006, and allegedly went on to pressure the Adult Film star to silence through an intermediary in 2011, and utilised his lawyer Michael Cohen to buy her silence for a hundred and thirty thousand dollars in October 2016, a month before the election. Furthermore, the “Cambridge Analytica scandal” came forward, in which it was revealed that Donald Trump had a acquired the assistance of Cambridge Analytica during his campaign, (Lewis and Hilder, 2018; Chang, 2018) a data analysis firm that provided Donald Trump with social media assistance in regards to advertising on social media. They were allegedly provided with ‘voter-profiles’ compiled from datasets they had bought from Facebook. Donald Trump has been in a flurry of scandals, these two, along with the scandal involving his “Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.” (Nytimes.com, 2016) comment, the FBI ​ ​ investigation that by some has been called a “War on the FBI” (Bertrand, 2018) and the John ​ McCain scandal we have focused on in our discursive analysis, provides him with a surprising number of scandals since his decision to run for president, and even more so since his inauguration one and a half years ago. Many of which would have felled many presidents alone, and with the combined burden of these one may wonder how he manages to stay afloat. One of the methods that keeps him afloat is the deflecting discoursal structure that we discussed earlier, wherein he when put under the pressure of a media scandal reverts to deflecting the attacks made upon his character by going on the offensive, continuously attacking his detractors verbally, and through social media. Furthermore, as he has continuously reinforced the discoursal structure that he is anti-establishment, and not like the other candidates. As Barbara Perry, the Director of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs stated: “There is a genius in Trump’s run for the presidency in that he starts with the premise that ​ all politicians are crooked, and I’m not one, so you don’t need to judge me the way you judge politicians,” (Waxman, 2018) ​ In conclusion, one of the interesting yet frightening methods applied by Donald Trump in his discourse is his tactic of offense when put in the spotlight of a scandal, constantly attacking his

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detractors and discrediting them by using what must almost be his catchphrase by now “Fake ​ News” implying a bias inherent in his detractors. (Waxman, 2018; Bertrand, 2018) We can also ​ concluded that there is a correlation between tweets and votes.

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6.0. Conclusion

In conclusion, we have proved that there is a strong polarization evident in the political climate of the United States of America, and that this has resulted in the establishment of Echo ​ Chambers, these homophilous ego networks tend to be more common amongst Conservatives, and ​ this has been in Donald Trump’s favour as his target audience is the Conservative voting base. Donald Trump’s discoursal strategy during the John McCain scandal turned out to be quite indicative of his overall strategy when encountering critique in the form of a political scandal. Exhibiting hard centrifugal pressure by way of hostility, and deflecting through aggression. This strategy has functioned well as the polarized and fragmented voter base have been unable to impose a harsh centripetal pressure when Donald Trump has been scandalized, thus allowing his rhetoric to go unchallenged. Donald Trump has been extremely capable at constructed discoursal structures supporting his narrative of being anti-establishment, most evident of this being his “Make America Great ​ Again” slogan, that exacerbated his image of being unlike previous politician, and implying that ​ these politicians running against him worked against the American populations best intention. Donald Trump received a disproportionate amount of attention during his campaign, and when Tweeting worked to put his followers centerfold, unlike the candidates running against him. This again build up his image of being the only candidate that worked to improve the situation of the common american and thus the only trying to “Make America Great Again”. ​ ​ We also investigated whether or not there was a correlation between tweets and votes, our investigation showed a correlation between tweets and votes. Our datas R-squared value was 0.92 which is above the minimum required value of 0.65 which you will need social scientific connections. This proves the relevance of our data. The correlation is interesting considering Donald Trump’s discourse on twitter and the amount of Tweets he sends out as part of his strategy during the election. We can therefore conclude that Donald Trump’s discoursal strategy on Twitter affected his campaign positively and has benefited his political campaign during the U.S. election in 2016. We then discussed his method of handling scandals in general, showing that our specific case followed his typical discursive structure when handling scandals in general. Furthermore,

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granting an overview of several other scandals that Donald Trump has been involved in since the John McCain scandal. From our investigation we have concluded that Donald Trump’s discursive strategy in time of crisis is characterized by open hostility and staying on the offense throughout.

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7.0. Bibliography

● Anderson, M. (2017). Bernie Sanders Says Trump Won Because Democrats Are Out Of ​ Touch. [online] Npr.org. Available at: ​ https://www.npr.org/2017/01/06/508385203/bernie-sanders-says-trump-won-because-democ rats-are-out-of-touch [Accessed 11 Dec. 2017]. ​ ● Baldoni, J, 2016, Is Donald Trump a Role Model for Authenticity?. [online] Forbes.com. ​ ​ Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnbaldoni/2016/01/02/is-donald-trump-a-role-model-for-aut henticity/#4e50165733bc [Accessed 14 Dec. 2017]. ● Bertrand, N. (2018). The Chilling Effect of Trump’s War on the FBI. [online] The Atlantic. ​ ​ Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/05/the-chilling-effect-of-trumps-war-on-t he-fbi/561218/ [Accessed 27 May 2018]. ​ ● Biography. (2017). John McCain. [online] Available at: ​ ​ https://www.biography.com/people/john-mccain-9542249 [Accessed 13 Dec. 2017]. ​ ● Bishop, B, 2004, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us ​ Apart, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Boston ​ ● Chang, A. (2018). The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal, explained with a simple ​ diagram. [online] Vox. Available at: ​ https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/3/23/17151916/facebook-cambridge-analytic a-trump-diagram [Accessed 27 May 2018]. ​ ● Conway B, Kenski K, Wang D, 2015. The Rise of Twitter in the Political Campaign: The ​ Rise of Twitter in the Political Campaign: Searching for Intermedia Agenda-Setting Effects in the Presidential Primary [ONLINE] Available at: ​ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcc4.12124/full. [Accessed 13 December 2017]. ​ ● Country First PAC. (2017). About John Mccain. [online] Available at: ​ ​ https://www.johnmccain.com/aboutjohn.php [Accessed 13 Dec. 2017]. ​ ● DiGrazia J, McKelvey K, Bollen J, Rojas F (2013) More Tweets, More Votes: Social Media as a Quantitative Indicator of Political Behavior. PLoS ONE 8(11): e79449. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0079449 [Accessed 11th December 2017] ​

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