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• 1 2016-11-01T11:13:39-07:00 Trump and Social Media 10 plain 2016-11-01T15:16:04-07:00 Donald Trump has used social media, specifically Twitter, to reach the American people during this election.  His entire platform has been mainly released on Twitter.  He has used Twitter as a form of free advertising.  In this day in age T.V. commercials are not nearly as effective as a popular twitter account.  Many people do not even watch television commercials anymore due to websites like Netflix and due to DVRs.  More people, especially in younger generations use social media as their news sources instead of broadcast news.  The difference from even 2013 to 2016 shows just how important social media is in this year's election. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Twitter especially gave him a large advantage during the primary.  For example, Trump has over 12 million followers on twitter, while Marco Rubio does not even have 2 million and Jeb Bush does not even have 1 million.  Not only were more people being influenced by Trump on Twitter, but also the media was only talking about him.  So while 140 character tweets may not seem like they should be deciding factors in who our next President should be it has become very important in this election.  Trump found a way to reach the younger generation and was able to monopolize media coverage because of the outrageous things he was saying. During the primary the only Republican candidate that got a large amount of coverage on CNN was Trump.  While what they were saying might have been negative, his ideas and opinions were still the only ones being heard.  Even on Fox Trump had more coverage than any other candidate.  All of this was because of his Twitter.  While CNN and, at first, even Fox did not take him seriously and were practically making fun of him, they actually furthered his campaign and hurt every other candidate by not covering them and focusing solely on Trump.  Eventually everyone realized he was a serious candidate and that while some of what he was saying was shocking and seemed ridiculous to many, it was working and he was using that very shock value to further his campaign.  Some of Trump’s tweets were shocking, but still what many people were actually feeling and agreeing with.  Others were outright horrendous and they may have gotten him extra news coverage, but were in no way acceptable.  Overall, no one else stood a chance in the primary because they were not even being talked about.
  
  
  I think that Nick Montfort’s argument about the cyborg author could come into play here.  Trump is the one who is tweeting his ideas and he is the one who is running for president.  However, does Twitter deserve any recognition?  Since Twitter is the program the Trump used to help his campaign does it deserve credit for his success?  Or perhaps the creators of Twitter?  Montfort refers to this as “collaborative human-computer authorship”.  While I am not obviously not suggesting that Trump make Twitter or one of its founders his running mate, I am suggesting that perhaps he should give credit to the program for helping his candidacy.