Social Media
In the build up to the 2016 US Election, twitter has been one of the most popular platforms for the candidates to share their views. It’s used as much as it is because it is so accessible. It makes it very easy to for the candidates to get their messages across to their audience directly. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have each been incredibly active on Twitter, sometimes interacting with each other which has led to things getting heated at times, even to the extent of being classed as a ‘Twitter War’.
In one example, when Obama endorsed Clinton, Trump tweeted, “Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary. He wants four more years of Obama-but nobody else does!”, to which Clinton quickly responded: “Delete your account”. Trump responded again with “How long did it take your staff of 823 people to think that up--and where are your 33,000 emails that you deleted?”
Other twitter users quickly got involved; the most popular response was from a user being “Fuck you both. Stop arguing on Twitter. I'm scared for either one of you to run this country.”. This was only one of the many tweets in response to their interaction with each other. The responses ranged from very negative to very positive for both sides of the argument.
Other twitter users quickly got involved; the most popular response was from a user being “Fuck you both. Stop arguing on Twitter. I'm scared for either one of you to run this country.”. This was only one of the many tweets in response to their interaction with each other. The responses ranged from very negative to very positive for both sides of the argument.
Out of the three tweets, Hillary’s got the most retweets and likes. It actually went viral with 556,456 retweets, a significant amount of retweets more than her usual, which usually range from around 100,000 to 150,000. While the responses to both of Trump’s tweets stayed serious and mostly political, because to the viral status Hillary’s tweet got it reached a much wider audience who were not political and was responded to with a lot unpolitical tweets, many of the responses even coming in Gif form:
Many people believed this Twitter interaction seemed unprofessional however this wasn’t the only time the two used social media in this way. There were many other occasions where both Trump and Clinton tweeted badly about each other. Trump even coined the hashtag #CrookedHillary and often used it in his tweets when speaking of Clinton. This presidential election was like no other because the amount of aggressive back and forth the two candidates would have on Twitter. While it may seem unprofessional to many people, it’s actually very smart from both sides. The use of Twitter not only broadens the candidates audience/following, it accesses a younger generation who might not usually pay attention to politics.
It can be proven that the use of attacking the opposing candidate over social media is a successful publicity tactic as some of the most popular tweets from both Trump and Hillary have been the tweets aimed at each other, as shown by the earlier examples. The use of “Delete your account” by Hillary is a very common term used by the younger, more social media focused generation which allowed her to access that part of her audience, whereas if she was to tweet about political issues, there would be a significantly smaller amount of response to it.
Jon Keegan wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal which live-updates a comparison of Trump and Clinton’s twitter profiles. Below is a graph from the article, showing the amount of followers both Trump and Clinton have gained since announcing their candidacy.
Many people believed this Twitter interaction seemed unprofessional however this wasn’t the only time the two used social media in this way. There were many other occasions where both Trump and Clinton tweeted badly about each other. Trump even coined the hashtag #CrookedHillary and often used it in his tweets when speaking of Clinton. This presidential election was like no other because the amount of aggressive back and forth the two candidates would have on Twitter. While it may seem unprofessional to many people, it’s actually very smart from both sides. The use of Twitter not only broadens the candidates audience/following, it accesses a younger generation who might not usually pay attention to politics.
It can be proven that the use of attacking the opposing candidate over social media is a successful publicity tactic as some of the most popular tweets from both Trump and Hillary have been the tweets aimed at each other, as shown by the earlier examples. The use of “Delete your account” by Hillary is a very common term used by the younger, more social media focused generation which allowed her to access that part of her audience, whereas if she was to tweet about political issues, there would be a significantly smaller amount of response to it.
Jon Keegan wrote an article for The Wall Street Journal which live-updates a comparison of Trump and Clinton’s twitter profiles. Below is a graph from the article, showing the amount of followers both Trump and Clinton have gained since announcing their candidacy.
As shown, Trump has gained over 6 million more followers on Twitter than Clinton has over the same amount of time. Clinton actually announced her candidacy months before Trump did but had a much slower gain of followers compared to Trump’s sudden rise in Twitter fame. It is obvious from simply looking through Trump’s Twitter profile that he is the most controversial, or at least most brutally honest, out of himself and Clinton. This would suggest the controversy in his tweets gained more attention than anything else that was being said by any other presidential candidate. By using Twitter in this way, Trump managed to frequently catch the attention of even the least politically involved Twitter users.
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