Trump tweets the truth

Abstract

Since its inception, studies on ‘digital populism’ have focused mainly on the savviness of populist movements and politicians in their use of social media. The focus in this paper is different: we know quite a bit already about what populists do on and through social media, but very little has been written about what populists say about social media – how they frame them as environments for political communication, and with what kinds of implications. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have not only become central players in present-day debates regarding free speech, political correctness and truth/fake, but also become part of (populist) political discourse in terms of their content moderation policies and intervention, or lack thereof. I will explore these issues through an examination of Donald Trump’s discourse on social media as an environment for political communication, and their moderation policies.

Keywords

• Social media
• Dircourse
• Populism
• Media ideology
• Conspiracy