{"id":3854,"date":"2016-11-15T07:57:44","date_gmt":"2016-11-15T07:57:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oii.ox.ac.uk\/policy\/?p=3854"},"modified":"2020-12-07T14:24:50","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T14:24:50","slug":"dont-shoot-the-messenger-what-part-did-social-media-play-in-2016-us-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/dont-shoot-the-messenger-what-part-did-social-media-play-in-2016-us-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t Shoot the Messenger! What part did social media play in 2016 US e\u00adlection?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Young
Young activists gather at Lafayette Park in protest at the presidential campaign of presumptive Republican nominee Donald J. Trump. By Stephen Melkisethian<\/a> (Flickr).<\/figcaption><\/figure>
\nCommentators have been quick to \u2018blame social media<\/a>\u2019 for \u2018ruining<\/a>\u2019 the 2016 election in putting Mr Donald Trump in the White House. Just as was the case in the campaign for Brexit, people argue that social media has driven us to a \u2018post-truth\u2019 world of polarisation and echo chambers.<\/p>\n

Is this really the case? At first glance, the ingredients of the Trump victory\u200a\u2014\u200aas for Brexit\u200a\u2014\u200aseem remarkably traditional. The Trump campaign spent more on\u00a0physical souvenirs than on field data<\/a>, more on Make America Great Again hats (made in China) than on polling.\u00a0The Daily Mail<\/em>\u00a0characterisation of judges as Enemies of the People after their ruling that the triggering of Article 50 must be discussed in parliament seemed reminiscent of the 1930s. Likewise, US crowds chanting \u2018Lock her up\u2019, like lynch mobs, seemed like ghastly reminders of a pre-democratic era.<\/p>\n

Clearly social media were a big part of the 2016 election, used heavily by the\u00a0candidates themselves<\/a>, and generating\u00a08.8 billion posts, likes and comments<\/a>on Facebook alone. Social media also make visible what in an earlier era could remain a country\u2019s dark secret\u200a\u2014\u200ahatred of women (through\u00a0death and rape threats and trolling<\/a>\u00a0of female politicians in both the UK and US), and rampant racism.<\/p>\n

This visibility, society\u2019s new self-awareness, brings change to political behaviour. Social media provide\u00a0social information\u00a0about what other people are doing: viewing, following, liking, sharing, tweeting, joining, supporting and so on. This social information is the driver behind the\u00a0political turbulence<\/a>\u00a0that characterises politics today. Those rustbelt Democrats feeling abandoned by the system saw on social media that they were not alone\u200a\u2014\u200athat other people felt the same way, and that Trump was viable as a candidate. For a woman drawn towards the Trump agenda but feeling tentative, the hashtag #WomenForTrump could reassure her that there were like-minded people she could identify with. Decades of social science research shows information about the behaviour of others influences how groups behave and now it is driving the unpredictability of politics, bringing us Trump,\u00a0Brexit<\/a>, Corbyn, Sanders and unexpected\u00a0political mobilisation<\/a>\u00a0across the world.<\/p>\n

These are not echo chambers. As recent research shows, people are exposed to\u00a0cross-cutting discourse on social media<\/a>, across ever larger and more heterogeneous social networks. While the hypothetical #WomenForTrump tweeter or Facebook user will see like-minded behaviour, she will also see a peppering of social information showing people using opposing hashtags like #ImWithHer, or (post-election) #StillWithHer. It could be argued that a better example of an \u2018echo chamber\u2019 would be a regular\u00a0Daily Mail<\/em>\u00a0reader or someone who only watched Fox News.<\/p>\n

The mainstream media loved Trump: his controversial road-crash views sold their newspapers and advertising. Social media take us out of that world. They are relatively neutral in their stance on content, giving no particular priority to extreme or offensive views as on their platforms, the numbers are what matter.<\/p>\n

Rather than seeing social media solely as the means by which Trump ensnared his presidential goal, we should appreciate how they can provide a wealth of valuable data to understand the anger and despair that the polls missed, and to analyse\u00a0political behaviour and opinion<\/a>\u00a0in the times ahead. Social media can also shine the light of transparency on the workings of a Trump administration, as they did on his campaign. They will be critical for building networks of solidarity to confront the intolerance, sexism and racism stirred up during this bruising campaign. And social media will underpin any radical counter-movement that emerges in the coming years.<\/p>\n

\n

Helen Margetts is the author of\u00a0Political Turbulence: How Social Media Shape Collective Action<\/a>\u00a0and thanks her co-authors\u00a0Peter John<\/a>,\u00a0Scott Hale<\/a>and\u00a0Taha Yasseri<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Commentators have been quick to \u2018blame social media\u2019 for \u2018ruining\u2019 the 2016 election in putting Mr Donald Trump in the White House. Just as was the case in the campaign for Brexit, people argue that social media has driven us to a \u2018post-truth\u2019 world of polarisation and echo chambers. Is this really the case? At […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":3860,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[87,202,227,418,417],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3854"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3854"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3854\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3866,"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3854\/revisions\/3866"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}