Nature Communications (Nov 2020)

Using the president’s tweets to understand political diversion in the age of social media

  • Stephan Lewandowsky,
  • Michael Jetter,
  • Ullrich K. H. Ecker

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19644-6
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 1
pp. 1 – 12

Abstract

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By analyzing President Trump’s tweets and data from two media sources, the authors provide evidence suggesting that when the media reports on a topic potentially harmful to the president, he tweets about unrelated issues. Further evidence from this case study suggests that these diversionary tweets may also successfully reduce subsequent media coverage of the harmful topic.