(iPoster) Embrace Americanism in the Clicktatorship: DHS and Labor as Norm Entrepreneurs

• In Event: Poster Sessions: Polarization, Identity, and Democratic Vulnerability & Political Communication I
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Political Communication I

Abstract

A feature of the Trump administration is the politicization of government in order to use its full power to promote MAGA principles. In Trump’s ‘clicktatorship’, as Don Moynihan puts it, content is king. The social media feeds of the various executive agencies coordinate content to forward the MAGA agenda. The goal is to keep the base engaged and the haters enraged, especially through the use of nostalgia and anti-immigrant tropes. However, the posts are not merely provocative clickbait; they reconstruct the very nature of American identity. Specifically, though an analysis of 2025 Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Labor (DoL) social media posts, the authors analyze how the feeds promote a MAGA or a “blood and soil” definition of American identity over a creedal national identity. The public affairs units behave as norm/moral entrepreneurs to define the ‘homeland’ and “American” (the good) and to foment moral panic using a variety of imagery that socially construct an “American” as distinct from an “immigrant”. Using industry standards, the authors determine the social media campaign to be moderately successful in garnering attention, reshaping narratives, and shifting conceptions of citizenship.

Authors

• Stephanie Anderson, University of Wyoming

• Nicholas Lowry, Swann Auction Galleries