In this historic battle for the White House, Trump used a not-so-secret weapon to devastating effect to not only Hillary Clinton in the general election, but his Republican opponents in the primaries as well. This weapon was social media.
Trump's presence on social media, most notoriously Twitter, gave him a distinct advantage from the very beginning of his campaign. His direct and often ridiculous tweets made him the most noticeable Republican candidate out of a pool of seventeen, despite being one of the least qualified of the bunch. Coupled with his extremely outspoken and brutally honest personality, his social media presence turned him from a political nonentity into the next president of the United States and one of the most powerful individuals on the planet.
But why, of all elections, was this election in particular most affected by the presence of social media? The rise of social media has coincidentally came with the rise of millennials. This election was the first time many millennials were qualified to vote. With a very large percent of this generation on social media, presidential candidates, like Trump, were able to reach out to them and connect with them faster than ever before.
Many political analysts stated Trump often performed best in the polls when he received large amounts of attention, and social media allowed him to get all the attention and momentum his campaign needed. Regardless of your position on Trump, you cannot deny Trump is a very unusual candidate and changes are definitely on the way.
2 comments:
Fake election maps like these insinuate Millennials (those who relied on social media the most during this election cycle) were overwhelmingly against Trump, but he really did dominate all social platforms to his advantage. I agree that his passionate tweets at 3 AM resinated with young voters who craved a candidate as hardworking as themselves. It is interesting to note that only 13% of young eligible citizens in TN alone were estimated to have participated in the 2016 Primary/Caucus, with low turnout being a trend among Millennials. I think social media is moving beyond Millennial ownership, spilling over into more traditional forms of entertainment/news that people of all ages engage; even my 76 year old grandmother references articles she found on The Facebook!
Social media was one thing that I noticed more during the presidential race. Donald Trump used the social media to insult and harass the other candidates. It did got the people's attention, and that resulted to Trump's victory.
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