Research paper

Kaelan Wong

Gina Gemmel

English 161

October 20, 2017

Social Media and the 2016 Election: A Literature Review

There had been a lot of talk during and after the 2016 election because of how unique it

was compared to all the previous ones. Only recently has social media started to play a

significant role in political campaigns, which can clearly be seen with Donald trump’s campaign

in the 2016 election. One main argument is that the use of social media by Trump is what led

him to victory; however, others may disagree, stating that his political views and ideology is

what gave him the advantage. This review examines articles written by Michael Barbaro and

Christine Lagorio-Chafkin for the New York Times alongside academic journals written by

Gunn Enli and Frida Ghitis for SAGE journals and the World Politics Review, respectively.

Regarding social media, many tend to focus on its rise in popular culture the following of people

of people that it tends to bring, and its utilization by the candidate or its political party.

[Lit Review Paragraph One: Rise of Social Media (Barbaro, Enli, Lagorio-Chafkin, Ghitis)]

Generally, the clear majority agrees that the rise of social media has been prominent in

these past few years. Michael Barbaro, author of “Pithy, Mean, and Powerful: Donald Trump

Mastered Twitter for 2016,” states how social media is free and can relay information to the

public in a quick way. Barbaro points out how this can be extremely useful, especially as it

slowly substitutes for “costly, conventional” methods. As an example, Barbaro mentions how

rival campaigns acknowledge the advantage that Trump has because of his millions of Twitter

followers and how he gets more mention and retweets compared to other candidates. Gunn Enli,

author of “Twitter as Arena for the Authentic Outsider: Exploring the Social Media Campaigns

Student 2

of Trump and Clinton in the 2016 US Presidential Election,” takes this further, believing that

social media can easily reach the masses, serving as a main source of information. Enli reminds

us that new platforms have emerged while existing ones have expanded. Christin Lagorio-

Chafkin, author of “Reddit and the God Emperor of the Internet,” has a more specific focus on

social media, claiming that Reddit has become one of the most significant websites on the

internet. Lagorio-Chafkin observes how Trump’s subreddit “The_Donald” has gained around

300,000 members (It has over half a million now as of October 2017). On the other hand, Frida

Ghitis, author of “Trump’s Victory Was Aided by Russia’s Weaponized Social Media

Campaign,” takes on a different focus: WikiLeaks. Arguably a type of social media, WikiLeaks

grew to a significant size such that it could be used to weaponize information. While all four

authors believe that social media is on the rise, Barbaro and Enli focused on depicting the rise of

Twitter. On the other hand, Lagorio-Chafkin puts his focus on Reddit’s development, and Ghitis

puts her spotlight on WikiLeak’s potential because of its size.

[Lit Review Paragraph Two: Trump’s Following on Social Media (Enli, Barbaro)]

The following that social media spurs usually reflects the popularity of the social media

and the structure of the outlet. Enli simply shows us the vast size of this following. She notes

how Trump has over 17.6 million followers compared to The New York Times, which only has

1.2 million online subscribers. Barbaro agrees and describes this following, pointing out how this

team supports Trump even when his tweets were very inappropriate. Barbaro describes Trump’s

following on Twitter as a “SWAT team of devoted supporters.” This loyalty, he claims,

originates from Trump’s candidness and style. Barbaro identifies this loyalty to the extreme with

Gary Forbes, who recruited volunteers to send out daily e-mails, emphasizing Trump’s

messages. The two authors would clearly agree with each other about the importance and growth

of Trump’s Twitter supporters.

Student 3

[Lit Review Paragraph Three: Different Kinds of Social Media Sites (Lagorio-Chafkin, Ghitis)]

There are different types of followings that exist over the internet. Lagorio-Chafkin

asserts that the sizable following on Trump’s subreddit have created a community amongst

themselves. Many of these supporters have identified as Islamophobic, trolled liberals, and/or

consistently bashed Hillary Clinton. They even had their own slang with words inside jokes that

only the community understood such as “MAGA” (Make America Great Again), “God

Emperor” (Trump), memes, and nicknames like “Pedes.” Lagorio-Chafkin describes the

subreddit as having the ability to serve as a safe space for Trump supporters. He notes that at

some point, this following was like a cult. Ghitis, identifies another social media on the other

side of the spectrum. She suggests that WikiLeaks is not as much of a community and is more

used as a weapon because of its ability to reveal information to the masses, which hardly come

together to interact with each other through this platform. Although these two sources are at

completely opposites ends of the spectrum regarding the interaction between people who follow

social media, there are social media outlets that find a happy medium.

[Lit Review Paragraph Four: The Influence of Trump’s Usage of Twitter (Barbaro, Enli)]

No matter how well social media is growing in this society or how strongly connected the

following that it brings is, the application of it by Trump can greatly alter the success in his

political campaign. Both Barbaro and Enli researched Trump’s Twitter during the 2016 election.

However, they have different juxtaposed opinions on Trump’s actual usage of it. Barbaro asserts

that his tweets in these past years have been pithy and mean, but powerful. Barbaro reminds us

of the time Trump tweeted about the lack of physical attractiveness of Kim Novak, Arianna

Huffington, and Bette Midler. Yet, his dominance is still prominent with eight times as many

mentions as other Republican rivals and twice as many retweets as Clinton. On the other hand,

there is Enli’s view of Trump’s twitter. She claims that it can be viewed as him being amateur,

Student 4

authentic, and non-professional, which can be a counter-trend in the political campaign. Enli sees

Trump’s tweets as a combination of gut-feeling impulses rather than the professionalism shown

in Clinton’s tweets. Either way, both Barbaro and Enli see how Trump’s utilized the respective

techniques that the researchers identified to gain more exposure in mainstream news. These

methods that Trump’s used on his Twitter were more focused on his own political campaign.

[Lit Review Paragraph Four: The Influence of Others’ Usage of Social Media (Lagorio-Chafkin,

Ghitis)]

Trump’s usage of social media also resulted in the attacking of the opposing political

rival. Lagorio-Chafin describes how the tightly bonded community created by Trump’s subreddit

on Reddit could come work together to make great progress in his campaign. Lagorio-Chafkin

emphasizes that when the thousands of Clinton’s e-mails had been released to the public by

WikiLeaks, the subreddit community combed through them to look for the e-mails that could be

incriminating and/or give a bad image of Clinton. Furthermore, although it is impossible to ever

find out, Lagorio-Chafkin thinks that it is not hard to believe that these hundreds of thousands of

individuals spent a few minutes at the polls after spending months discussing about it. Similary,

Ghitis’ view on WikiLeaks is an attack on the opposing political rival; however, this attack hkas

less of a direct connection to Trump. Ghitis claims that Russia’s intervention was a key factor to

Donald Trump’s presidential election victory. The source of the thousands of e-mails released by

WikiLeaks is Russia’s hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Ghitis reports that

Trump set out to gain the support of Bernie supporters, utilizing their acrimony towards the

Democratic Party after it was revealed by the e-mails that the party was favoring Clinton. The

party was further wounded when the DNC chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, was forced to

resign because of the hack. Ghitis explains that with the release of the -mails, the many

conspiracy theories of Trump gained the impression of believability, further blurring the lines

Student 5

between fact and fiction, giving the Democratic Party a worse reputation. Social media is not just

a one-way street where information is laid out to the public who reacts to it. Social media can

also be used to progress towards the goals of the political party.

Although the typical influences of an election are the voter’s background and

identification with the candidates, the voter’s party identification, the voter’s view of the

incumbent’s previous performance, and the ideology of the candidates, social media outlets are

on the rise as a big influence on voting behavior. All the authors really accentuated the

importance of social media on the election. Barbaro and Enli had similar views, really focusing

on the size of the following; meanwhile, Lagorio-Chafkin described the subreddit family, and

Ghitis juxtaposed that with a description that of WikiLeaks. The prior two authors also analyzed

two different perspectives of Trump on Twitter and the latter two discussed the different ways

that social media users personally influenced the election. In general, it is agreeable between all

the sources and myself that social media is on the rise and is played a great role in the election of

Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. While the sources mainly focused on social

media’s influence of the election, it may be important to note how the analysis of other

influences of voting behavior may be advantageous for further research that relates to Trump.

Student 6

Works Cited

Barbaro, Michael. “Pithy, Mean and Powerful: How Donald Trump Mastered Twitter for 2016.”

The New York Times. The New York Times, 5 Oct. 2015.

Enli, Gunn. “Twitter as Arena for the Authentic Outsider: Exploring the Social Media

Campaigns of Trump and Clinton in the 2016 US Presidential Election.” European

Journal of Communication, vol. 32, no. 1, 2017, pp. 50-61.

Ghitis, Frida. “Trump’s Victory Was Aided by Russia’s Weaponized Social Media Campaign.”

World Politics Review, World Politics Review, 10 Nov. 2016.

Lagorio-Chafkin, Christine. “Reddit and the God Emperor of the Internet.” The New York Times,

The New York times, 19 Nov. 2016.