Trump, Twitter, and News Media Responsiveness: A Systems Approach

• In Event: New Research on the 2016 American Presidential Election

Abstract

Growing scholarly attention to the hybrid media system is spurring interest in the systemic qualities of media interaction. In this paper, we build on this work in the context of news media coverage of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Republican and Democratic presidential primaries. We develop a categorization scheme for American media outlets using two dimensions: partisanship, and embeddedness within a traditional, or social media conversation. Using that scheme, we map the flow of attention to Trump and Clinton through social media and each of the types of news media we identify. Our results demonstrate that whereas social media activity provided a significant boost to news media coverage of Trump, no such boost was available for Clinton. Moreover, it appears that multiple mainstream sectors of the media system were responsive to social media interest in Trump—not only those centered in the social sharing ecosystem.

Authors

• Christopher Wells, U of Wisconsin-Madison

• Dhavan Shah, U of Wisconsin, Madison

• Ayellet Pelled, University of Wisconsin

• Jon Pevehouse, U of Wisconsin-Madison

• Zhongkai Sun, U of Wisconsin-Madison