Chapter 8—Trump, Twitter, and the Battle for Symbolic Power the Fake News Media Hates When I Use What Has Turned out to Be My
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Citizens at the Gates Stephen R. Barnard Chapter 8—Trump, Twitter, and the Battle for Symbolic Power The Fake News Media hates when I use what has turned out to be my very powerful Social Media - over 100 million people! I can go around them - @realDonaldTrump, June 16, 20171 Just after midnight on May 31, 2017 President Donald J. Trump posted a 43-character tweet that read: “Despite the constant negative press covfefe” [sic]. In the nine hours it took for the tweet to be deleted, a fiery and ironic debate took place—appropriately, on Twitter—about whether or not “covfefe” was a word, what it was supposed to mean, and what meaning might be gleaned from the fact that it was posted (and deleted) without explanation (Flegenheimer, 2016; Willis, n.d.). Of course, for most who participated this was more an act of humor or bewilderment than it was a serious debate. Nevertheless, it illustrates the seriousness with which much of the public regards Trump’s Twitter account. Indeed, the following day #covfefe became Twitter’s top trending hashtag worldwide (Russell, 2017). Perhaps more importantly, the gaffe sparked a much larger conversation, prompting congressional representative Mike Quigley to introduce a bill named “Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement Act,” or “COVFEFE Act” for short. Capitalizing on the publicity surrounding Trump’s typo, Quigley aimed to start a real, public debate. At the heart of the debate was one question: does the President have the right to use Twitter’s “block user” feature to keep other users, many of whom are American citizens, from seeing his tweets? This was no hypothetical since many users had already reported being blocked from Trump’s Twitter account, including celebrities like the American novelist Stephen King (Gibson, 2017). Beyond the allure of media spectacle, events like this provide a clear illustration of the manner in which the political and journalistic fields are becoming further intertwined in an age of mediatization (Esser and Strömbäck, 2014). While it has long been the case that both fields depend on one another for access and legitimation (Bourdieu, 2005), the ongoing revolution in communication cultures and technologies has resulted in significant shifts in the structure and practice of politics (Chadwick, 2013; Kreiss, 2014; Freelon and Karpf, 2015) and journalism (Russell 2016; Vos and Heinderyckx, 2015). Given the normalization of Twitter in both journalism and politics, Trump’s infamous use of the platform provides a unique opportunity to examine these changing dynamics. As others have argued, the rules governing political and journalistic action have shifted in recent years, likely as both a cause and consequence of Trump’s election (Ott, 2017; Wells et al., 2016). With this knowledge, many in the mediatized field, including professional politicians and members of the networked public, have responded in turn. In Trump’s terms, Quigley’s bill was a “counter-punch” to the symbolic power wielded by the President and his Twitter account—one designed to use Trump’s Twitter power against him. Indeed, the hashtag #covfefe, much like the bill, was tailor-made for virality in a mediatized news system. But in the age of Twitter, where the news cycle churns rapidly and 500 million 140-character message are published every day, it was a mere blip on the radar. After peaking at nearly 2,000 stories in each of the two days following the gaffe, news mentions declined drastically. Quigley’s bill rarely made headlines at all. 1 June 16, 2017. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/statuses/875690204564258816 1 Citizens at the Gates Stephen R. Barnard While this story makes for good fodder, this chapter is not about political gaffes, nor about political actors’ attempts to take advantage of them to score political points. Rather, the example here offers a vivid illustration of the way messages can spread in the age of Twitter. Throughout the book, we have examined numerous illustrations of how practice and power converge at the margins of the journalistic field. Now, we turn our attention to journalism’s intersection with the more traditional political field in order to observe the products and practices of journalists and journo-activists in that space and to compare influence across groups. Accordingly, this chapter will examine the workings of symbolic power on Twitter, and how this bears upon the practices of the journalistic field. Thus, this chapter asks: what happens to Twitter’s journalistic field in the age of Trump? And, what role are citizens playing in this process? After considering Trump’s use of Twitter as a form of gatecrashing, spectacle, and symbolic power, we examine the realities of a mediatized field context. Next, we briefly assess the framing and symbolic power of Trump’s tweets, which we then compare and contrast with those posted by journalists and activists. This includes a brief examination of trends in online news coverage. Finally, we compare and contrast each group’s potential for influence before drawing some conclusions about the hybridizing of journalism and politics in a time of mediatization. Data for this chapter is drawn from four primary sources. First, tweets from a cohort of 386 political journalists from November 8-17, 2016 and May 29 to June 4, 2017 broadly represent the way reporters tweeted events in the days following the election and during a somewhat typical week in Washington four months into Trump’s term in office. Second, tweets including the hashtag #TrumpsAmerica were collected during two time-frames: ten days following the election (November 8-17, 2016) and one week during Trump’s presidency (May 29-June 4, 2017). This data represents the role played by networked publics in calls for accountability in politics and journalism. Third, tweets by @realdonaldtrump from June 1, 2016 to June 30, 2017—a year that spans the final months of his campaign to his first months in office—were collected to assess themes, frames, and influence in comparison to other Twitter users. Fourth, two sets of online news stories, including those that mention “covfefe” (May 29 to June 4, 2017) and “@realdonaldtrump” (November 3-17, 2016 and May 29 to June 30, 2017) provide context for the way Trump’s use of Twitter was covered in online news. Overall, in addition to providing multiple points of comparison, the data collected for this chapter offers a diverse array of perspectives that, when considered in concert, provide a unique view of the role Twitter and online media play in the battle for symbolic power in the age of Trump. Trump, Twitter, and the News: Symbolic Power and Media(tized) Spectacle Over thirty five years ago, Michael Schudson (1982) published an essay about the role technology played in journalists’ covering of the presidency. At the time, the focus was on the structure and culture of American television and the emergent logics that followed its commercial success (cf. Postman, 1985). In light of recent events, the modern equivalent of such an inquiry may well focus on the role Twitter plays in mediating the presidency, due to its social and political (if not commercial) success. And like Schudson, I contend that much of what we see in modern journalism is less an outcome determined by technological innovation than it is a contingent response to the norms at the heart of the field’s foundation. That is, Schudson argued that many of television’s emergent norms for covering the presidency had actually long been 2 Citizens at the Gates Stephen R. Barnard normalized in other areas of the journalistic field—it just took them a while to take hold in the television environment. We could say much the same for today’s social media environment. If there was any doubt that contemporary politics and journalism have been mediatized— that is, driven in no small part by an intense media logic—then the 2016 election cycle should have settled it. Since the election of Donald Trump, we are witnessing what might be described as the first “Twitter Presidency.” Although presidents before him famously used social media— as you may recall from chapter one, @BarackObama is still, at the time of this writing, the fourth most-followed account on Twitter—Trump’s use of the platform is groundbreaking. Trump is a power player on Twitter, where as of this writing he has a combined follower- base of over 50 million users.2 His Twitter audience—a mix of supporters, critics, journalists, and political activists—has grown significantly over time, more than doubling since he took office.3 As many pundits have expressed, Trump’s use of Twitter demonstrates an unparalleled ability to shape public discourse. On account of his power and position, what he says gets covered even though it is said outside the channels of—and often with a profound contempt for—traditional media. Consequently, countless political and economic issues are shaped by the statements Trump makes through Twitter, including (inter)national relations and even the stock value of publicly traded companies (Goldmark, 2017). As I will argue, their primary function is the creation of mediated spectacle. According to George Lakoff (2017), Trump’s tweets accomplish one of four rhetorical objectives: they preemptively frame ideas, divert attention from significant issues, deflect blame by attacking the messenger, or test public reactions to a policy idea. While early studies have found Trump’s tweets to have a nominal effect on shaping the agendas of national newspapers (Conway-Silva, et al. 2017), other studies have concluded that “Trump’s efforts to court media attention, through staged events, unscheduled interactions, and social media activity, were largely successful” (Wells et al., 2016: 675). Indeed, as a report from the New York Times detailed, Donald Trump received almost $2 billion worth of free media coverage during the 2016 presidential primary race—nearly six times that of his closest rival (Confessore and Yourish, 2016).