Explaining Trump: Analyzing the Relationship Between Social Media and Mainstream Media Coverage

• In Event: Making Sense of Election 2016: How the Media Mattered in the U.S. Presidential Election

Abstract

Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump was known for many firsts during the presidential campaign, including his often hostile middle-of-the-night Twitter attacks on his rivals, the news media, and anyone else who crossed him during his bid for the presidency in 2016. During the primaries, analysis suggested that he earned nearly $3 billion in earned media coverage, compared with around $1 billion for Clinton and under $800 million for his Republican rival Ted Cruz. This study examines the relationship between Trump’s Twitter activity and the news media attention that Trump received during the early stages of the campaign using the theories of hybrid media (Chadwick, 2013) and affective publics (Papacharissi, 2015) to frame the analysis.

To answer that question, we analyze Trump’s Twitter messages as compared with three of his Republican opponents, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Jeb Bush in the surfacing and primary stages of the 2016 campaign to ascertain what types of messages diffused and with what sorts of magnitude. We also count and content analyze news media coverage of the candidates, including traditional mainstream media outlets, such as USA Today and The New York Times, as well as cable news coverage (CNN, Fox News, MSNBC). Social media analysis examines via computer-assisted content analysis the types of message that were more likely to diffuse and the nature of that diffusion (i.e. speed, reach). News analysis examines the frequency and also the style of mentions that focus on Trump as compared with his rivals, as well as the frequency of Trump’s tweets appearing in news stories as compared with his rivals. Our theory is that Trump’s outsized social media following due to his celebrity status before this presidential election cycle allowed him to produce Twitter messages that had a larger ripple effect in social media and may have played into generating more news coverage as a result.

This analysis aims to contribute to the scholarship explaining how Trump became the Republican presidential nominee by examining the complex hybrid media environment that Trump seemed to have mastered and played to his advantage in the 2016 election cycle.

Authors

• Jennifer Stromer-Galley, Syracuse U

• Jeff Hemsley, Syracuse U

• Patricia G. C. Rossini, School of Information Studies, Syracuse U

• Jerry Robinson, Syracuse U

• Lauren Bryant, U at Albany, SUNY

• Bryan Semaan, Syracuse U