The Formation of Attentive Publics in the Hybrid Media System: How Donald Trump Assembled his Amplification Machine

• In Event: The 2016 Election and Social Media

Abstract

Crucial to Donald Trump’s electoral success was his ability to draw attention from all corners of the hybrid media system. Previous research has shown the importance in particular of his Twitter following in driving press attention and coverage of him. However, we know relatively little about how Trump assembled the attentive public who would ultimately amplify his presence. In this essay, we take Trump’s 2016 campaign as an instructive one for theorizing and testing questions around the assembly of social media publics in hybrid media. We begin by placing Trump within the context of contemporary discussions of attention flow and audience formation. Then we develop a set of propositions concerning the processes by which social media publics are likely to aggregate to a particular object, in this case Trump himself. And we test the propositions using two methods, one quantitative and one qualitative case-based.

Authors

• Christopher Wells, U of Wisconsin-Madison

• Yini Zhang, U of Wisconsin Madison

• Josephine Lukito, U of Wisconsin-Madison

• Jon Pevehouse, U of Wisconsin-Madison