Twitter and politics: Evidence from the US presidential elections 2016

Abstract

Social media’s influence in the 2016 US presidential election has been stronger than it has ever been before and has led to a loss of ‘dominance’ of traditional media on public opinion. Candidates tweeted to express their positions, to attack each other, to retweet endorsements, to encourage people to vote, to give news previews, and a lot more. As a result, Twitter has become the most important communication channel for both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The more candidates used Twitter to broadcast their thoughts, the more people retweeted them spreading their messages and journalists mentioned tweets in their election coverage creating a virtuous circle that brought more and more attention to the micro-blogging platform. This article analyzes the tweets of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in order to understand the communication strategies performed through this media.

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