How Donald Trump Tweeted his Way into the White House
Permanent Link
Author/Creator
Author/Creator ORCID
Date
Type of Work
Department
Program
Citation of Original Publication
KNOWLES, ALISON. “How Donald Trump Tweeted His Way into the White House.” UMBC Review: Journal of Undergraduate Research 21 (2020): 131–56. https://ur.umbc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/354/2020/05/umbcReview_2020.pdf#page=131
Rights
This item is likely protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Unless on a Creative Commons license, for uses protected by Copyright Law, contact the copyright holder or the author.
Subjects
Abstract
This paper explores a selection of Donald Trump’s most popular tweets during the 2016 presidential election, seeking to answer two questions: What image did Trump create for himself using Twitter, and how did this image help him connect with his base? I use discourse analysis, which examines how power creates meaning through language, to categorize the tweets and to provide a better understanding of why Trump’s persuasive strategy was successful. This analysis led me to conclude that Trump used Twitter to cultivate his base’s predisposed beliefs about the government’s weakness and corruption while simultaneously portraying himself as the only candidate who could save the country from its problems.