Abstract
(1) The study investigated the social network surrounding the hashtags #maga (Make America Great Again, the campaign slogan popularized by Donald Trump during his 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns) and #trump2020 on Twitter to better understand Donald Trump, his community of supporters, and their political discourse and activities in the political context of the 2020 US presidential election. (2) Social network analysis of a sample of 220,336 tweets from 96,820 unique users, posted between 27 October and 2 November 2020 (i.e., one week before the general election day) was conducted. (3) The most active and influential users within the #maga and #trump2020 network, the likelihood of those users being spamming bots, and their tweets’ content were revealed. (4) The study then discussed the hierarchy of Donald Trump and the problematic nature of spamming bot detection, while also providing suggestions for future research.
Highlights
While the participation of social media in political discourse is not a new phenomenon, their influence in recent presidential elections has been unprecedented, exceeded previous limits, and dwarfed the regular dominance of legacy media on public opinion.Social media, Twitter, was considered the most critical communication channel for both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton throughout their 2016 presidential campaigns: on a daily average between October 2015 and November 2016, the two primary presidential candidates tweeted 13.25 and 21.56 times, respectively (Buccoliero et al 2020)
Came 2020, the year in which Donald Trump orchestrated, during the presidential election, what was described by the media as “a media circus” of conspiracy theories designed to distract, exact revenge, and entertain (Autry 2020; Pompeo 2020; Rich 2020; Trudo 2020)
The numbers of tweets, as well as unique users participating in the #maga and #trump2020 network on Twitter, increased greatly and gradually between 27 October and 2 November 2020, supporting the argument that a drastic surge in the number of tweets posted by political candidates, affiliations, and their supporters is generally expected before election days (Kruikemeier 2014)
Summary
While the participation of social media in political discourse is not a new phenomenon, their influence in recent presidential elections has been unprecedented, exceeded previous limits, and dwarfed the regular dominance of legacy media on public opinion.Social media, Twitter, was considered the most critical communication channel for both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton throughout their 2016 presidential campaigns: on a daily average between October 2015 and November 2016, the two primary presidential candidates tweeted 13.25 and 21.56 times, respectively (Buccoliero et al 2020). Came 2020, the year in which Donald Trump orchestrated, during the presidential election, what was described by the media as “a media circus” of conspiracy theories designed to distract, exact revenge, and entertain (Autry 2020; Pompeo 2020; Rich 2020; Trudo 2020). He repeatedly spread fake news, misinformation, and disinformation to smear the integrity of mail-in ballots, baselessly accuse the election to be rigged, and claim that he was the rightful winner (Egan 2020; Freking 2020; Riccardi 2020). After political fanatics attacked the Capitol on 6 January 2021, Donald Trump was accused of inciting the insurrection and banned from numerous social platforms (Colarossi 2021; Denham 2021; Eisen and Reisner 2021; Savage 2021; Twitter Inc. 2021)
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