US Presidential Campaign Research Articles

Aproximación al pensamiento político de Donald Trump: ¿es el presidente de Estados Unidos populista?

Both the 2016 US presidential election campaign and Donald Trump’s later presidency have entailed, in several aspects, a break with the traditional practices, uses, modes and forms in Western politics. The constant appeal to voters´ feelings (and low passions), the relativization of facts, the racist, xenophobic, sexist statements and those others hostile to minorities, a home policy rupturist with the past and a grandiloquent foreign policy have all been elements of a government action usually described as chaotic and impulsive, or even as childish and irrational. President Trump is usually accused of being a populist. This article aims at offering an approach to Trump’s political thought checking it against a series of elements deemed characteristic of populism. This will, in turn, allow to assess the extent to which the current host of the White House can be considered as a populist or not. Ultimately, the conclusion is reached that it is certainly possible to do so.

Exposure to untrustworthy websites in the 2016 US election

Though commentators frequently warn about “echo chambers,” little is known about the volume or slant of political misinformation people consume online, the effects of social media and fact-checking on exposure, or its effects on behavior. We evaluate these questions for the websites publishing factually dubious content often described as “fake news.” Survey and web traffic data from the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign show that Trump supporters were most likely to visit these websites, which often spread via Facebook. However, these sites made up a small share of people’s information diets on average and were largely consumed by a subset of Americans with strong preferences for pro-attitudinal information. These results suggest that widespread speculation about the prevalence of exposure to untrustworthy websites has been overstated.

Ahyper differential counterpublic: Muslim social media users and Islamophobia during the 2016 US presidential election

We interviewed 61 Muslims in 15 focus groups from the most visible Muslim population in the United States: the Detroit Metropolitan Area. Participants shared their experiences of and responses to Islamophobia on social media and face-to-face during the 2016 US presidential election campaign and aftermath. Applying Fraser’s and Squires’ theories of counterpublics, we developed an adapted understanding of counterpublics in collapsed contexts of online and face-to-face spaces. We argue that everyday Muslim internet users in the United States are an example of a hyper differential counterpublic. They face the pressures of near ubiquitous and ever evolving Islamophobic attacks, while needing to engage with the internet for personal and professional purposes. We suggest that hyper differential counterpublics operate in collapsed contexts of mixed, unimaginable publics, switch between group and individual responses, and craft hyper situational responses to discriminations case by case.

Right-wing populism and safe identities

ABSTRACTRecent events such as the US presidential campaign have polarised public opinion, particularly in terms of support for ‘populist’ political figures, e.g. Donald Trump, and the seemingly non-egalitarian ideologies that they promote. One might anticipate that disempowered social groups, such as women or sexual minorities, would reject ‘rightwing populism’, as it rarely appears to advocate their interests or facilitate their empowerment. Yet the existence of movements like ‘Gays for Trump’ and ‘#WomenWhoVoteTrump’ indicate more complex patterns of support. How might we understand this from gender and sexualities perspectives? This paper presents the proceedings of a round table discussion. Our contributors, members of a crossinstitutional social psychological Gender and Sexualities Research Group, each presented a brief five-minute interpretation of the phenomenon. They did so from gender and/or sexualities perspectives, drawing upon different social psychological theory. A chaired debate followed. Key themes from the round table are identified which are potentially helpful in understanding the phenomenon. The broader implications of these themes for practice and theory are considered in terms of the concept of ‘safe identities’.

A Dynamic Perspective on Publics and Counterpublics: The Role of the Blogosphere in Pushing the Issue of Climate Change During the 2016 US Presidential Campaign

ABSTRACT Climate change was hardly debated during the 2016 US presidential campaign. Against this background and building upon Fraser's concept of counterpublics (1990), this paper examines whether climate change advocates used the English-speaking blogosphere to push their positions forward. This study uses blog data starting from the Republican nomination of Donald Trump (20 July 2016) to Election Day (8 November 2016) and applies a computerized classification algorithm and topic-modeling techniques to explore, first, the salience of skeptic and advocate positions toward climate change in the English-speaking blogosphere and, second, with which topics these positions are most connected. The results show that the positions and topics of climate change advocates were more salient online than those of climate-change skeptics during the 2016 US presidential campaign. Thus, the study shows that the relation between different publics in societal discourses is not static but may change dynamically over time.

Stepping up and stepping back as scholars of color: taking care of students and ourselves in troubling times

In this article, the authors explore what it means to be critical qualitative researchers before, during, and after the 2016 US presidential campaign and election. They reflect on their positionality as scholars of color and second-generation immigrants with commitments to marginalized communities, but also with concerns for their own everyday lives, as well as those of their families, friends, and communities. Drawing from two critical ethnographic studies, they discuss ways they had to step up to support students and ways they had to step back to take care of themselves. They suggest that during these troubling times, educational institutions and scholars have a greater responsibility to acknowledge the daily pain and fear felt by marginalized communities, and also to work with those communities in their struggles for justice and liberation.

Election uncertainty, economic policy uncertainty and financial market uncertainty: A prediction market analysis

Abstract We examine the relationship between election uncertainty, economic policy uncertainty, and financial market uncertainty in a prediction-market analysis, covering seven US presidential election campaigns. We argue theoretically that changes in the incumbent party re-election probability should be a key driver of changes in policy uncertainty. Consistent with this theory, we find that a large portion of changes in financial uncertainty in the final stages of election campaign seasons is explained by changes in the probability of the incumbent party getting re-elected. Our findings suggest that the incumbent-party election probability, derived from prediction markets, is an important measure of economic policy uncertainty in the days leading up to US elections.

All the President’s Tweets: Effects of Exposure to Trump’s “Fake News” Accusations on Perceptions of Journalists, News Stories, and Issue Evaluation

The label “fake news” was used in 2016 to describe disinformation messages disseminated during the 2016 US Presidential campaign, particularly such messages on social media sites, but the term was quickly co-opted by President Donald Trump and his administration for use as a general epithet to discredit journalistic coverage critical of the White House. Across two preregistered experimental designs, we empirically examine the effect that President Trump’s tweets containing “fake news” accusations toward journalists have on how audiences perceive news stories. Our first study showed no direct effect of exposure to “fake news” tweets on outcomes. In our second study, we found users who read more fake news tweets rated a story about Hurricane Maria victims and its author as more credible, showed greater transportation into the story, experienced higher levels of meaningful affect, indicated more favorable views toward providing more aid to Puerto Ricans, and had greater intentions to consume more news in the future.

To Believe or Not to Believe: an Epistemic Exploration of Fake News, Truth, and the Limits of Knowing

In the 2016 US presidential election campaign, an online news story broke reporting that ‘tens of thousands’ of pre-marked ballots had been found in a warehouse in Ohio. The ballots were reportedly marked in favor of Hillary Clinton and were to be counted alongside real election ballot boxes. The story contained a picture of the ballot boxes along with the individual who supposedly discovered the ballots. The story was false; however, before its falseness was exposed, it went viral and was viewed by the media as having affected the outcome of the election in favour of Donald Trump. While the deceit of the creator of this fake news should be of great concern, the perilousness of fake news to the corrosion of democracy is substantial. In this paper, I explore what it means to be an online news consumer in relation to the magnitude of the problem of fake news. I examine what it means for online news consumers to acquire knowledge and the pitfalls they experience in a fake news online environment. I add another layer of analysis through the exploration of how online news consumers determine truth and discuss the boundaries of determining the truth in fake news online environments. I conclude that in a fake news online environment, acquiring knowledge for democratic participation is dubious. Determining the truth of fake news stories can be uncertain, and when combined with limited opportunities to gain knowledge, online news consumers are in a conundrum of what to believe. I conclude with the suggestion that one-way education ought to assist online news consumers in understanding the limits of their epistemological stances in relation to fake news in online environments as an outset to assist citizens to become better online news consumers, so they have the option to enact democracy through increased epistemic volition.

Trump’s 2016 Presidential Campaign and Adorno’s Psychological Technique: Content Analyses of Authoritarian Populism

There has been a burgeoning interest in the sociology of the Frankfurt School as well as the oeuvre of Theodor W. Adorno since the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump. The objectives of this study are to both illustrate the enduring importance of Adorno and to provide an important theoretical outline in making sense of Trump’s 2016 United States presidential campaign. Using Adorno’s understudied textual analysis of the radio addresses of Martin Luther Thomas and data from Trump’s 2016 US presidential campaign, we find that Trump’s own discourse can be condensed into three of Adorno’s rhetorical devices: (1) the lone wolf device or anti-statism/pseudo-conservatism, reflecting his criticism of “special interests” and his appraisal of business and (self-)finance; (2) the movement device, which amounted to glorification of action; and (3) the exactitude of error device which amounted to xenophobic, ethnonationalist hyperbole.

Introduction to symposium on “Themes of gender and identity in the 2016 US presidential election”

Themes of gender, gender roles and relations, and sex played major roles in the 2016 US presidential campaign and election. While Hillary Rodham Clinton’s status as the first woman presidential nom...

The post-fact world in a post-truth era: the productivity and emergent meanings of the prefix post- in contemporary English

This article proposes a cognitive linguistic analysis of the prefix post- in contemporary English by looking into the possible motivations of the semantic changes which have led to the increasing applicability of the prefix. The prefix's productivity in combinations such as post-truth and post-fact calls for expanding its original definition. These recent combinations go beyond the main two established meanings of the prefix, namely the spatial and the temporal meaning. In order to explain this semantic extension a radial model of categorisation is proposed. Offering an analysis of contexts in which the prefix post- is used in British and American press coverage, especially in relation to the 2016 UK Brexit referendum and the 2016 US presidential campaign, the article claims that the appearance of the prefix in new combinations is motivated by the need to describe the changing reality (especially in political and media discourse).

Contextualizing the black church: Analysis of newspaper coverage in the Obama–Wright controversy

This study analyzed the contextualized reporting about the black church in newspaper coverage of the 2008 US presidential primary campaign, during which inflammatory sermons by Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Senator Obama’s pastor, threatened to undermine Obama’s campaign. Given that the news media has been criticized for failing to adequately contextualize the black church in the controversy, we examined articles from major US newspapers for their use of two news routines, selection of news sources and explanations of the black church, to provide an understanding of Wright’s sermons. Journalists used Obama and Wright as sources in the stories more than black church sources (80% vs. 62%). Stories also depicted Wright’s church relationship with Obama and Wright’s achievements (50%–61%). Journalists’ and Obama’s explanations of the black church (59%–61%) were comparable to depictions of Wright’s sermons, their tone, and Wright and Pfleger as campaign problems (56%–67%). In the controversy’s latter phase, depictions of Wright and Pfleger as problems occurred more than black church and Obama’s explanations, but depictions of Obama’s break from Wright occurred more than Wright’s defenses. Journalists used several strategies to incorporate black church explanations into their stories; implications for teaching writing routines are discussed.

Uncertainty About DACA May Undermine Its Positive Impact On Health For Recipients And Their Children.

Undocumented immigrants and their children have worse self-reported health than documented immigrants and US citizens do. Evidence suggests that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which was created in 2012 by President Barack Obama and which granted some rights to undocumented immigrants who arrived as children, improved the well-being of recipients and their children in the first three years after the program's introduction. However, DACA is subject to executive discretion, and the US presidential campaign that began in 2015 introduced substantial uncertainty regarding the program's future. We examined whether DACA's health benefits persisted beyond 2015 using the 2007-17 waves of the California Health Interview Survey and dynamic treatment effects models. Our results show that self-reported health improved for Latina/o DACA-eligible immigrants and their children from 2012 to 2015 but worsened after 2015. Our results suggest that the political climate of the 2016 presidential election may have underscored the politically contingent nature of the DACA program and eroded the program's health benefits for eligible immigrants and their children.

The roles of social media in 21st century populisms: US Presidential campaigns

In the United States, “populist” is a controversial and often misunderstood signifier in common discourse. In addition, the current state of mass media and introduction of social networking tools has created a hyper-partisan spectacle of politics – especially during presidential campaign seasons. Through the review of literature on populism, traditional and social media, and presidential campaigning in the United States, this article constructs a new view on the relationship between these three topics in the 21st century. Important steps in this article’s process include defining populism and its place within campaigning and media; presenting social media as a political tool and a dynamic personalized informer; and analyzing the US presidential elections since 2008. Resultantly, because the trends of online activity, on the part of both the citizen and the candidate, impact social media users’ self-informing and political engagement, the process of selecting a new US president has become more susceptible to various populist practices in this century than before.

The Resurgence of Hate: Introductory Notes on the 2016 US Presidential Campaign

The Resurgence of Hate: Introductory Notes on the 2016 US Presidential Campaign

When a man debates a woman: Trump vs. Clinton in the first mixed gender presidential debates

ABSTRACTTelevised political debates have attracted intensive research interest. Here we examined the effect of mixed-gender televised political debates on the candidates’ multimodal gender communicative accountability structure. The 2016 election campaign in the United States introduced for the first time a new factor into the presidential political contest: gender. This study is grounded in a theoretical and analytical framework that maps gender accountability structures of verbal/nonverbal communication patterns. We analyzed the televised debates during the 2016 US presidential campaign with the candidates: Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The findings indicated that during mixed-gender debates, contenders present conduct that correspond to their gender communicative structures, primarily nonverbal patterns. Trump mainly expressed masculine-communicative patterns, while Clinton displayed mostly feminine-communicative patterns. The theoretical and analytical framework highlights the effect of gender on political communication. The novel perspective delineates and explains the implications of multimodal gender communicative accountability structure of contenders in mixed-gender political debates.

Politicization of Sexual Misconduct as Symbolic Annihilation: An Analysis of News Media Coverage of the 2016 “Rape Election”

Sixteen months after Donald J. Trump announced his candidacy for president of the United States a Washington Post headline read: “2016 is the rape election.” This paper examines the evolution of the discourse of sexual misconduct in the 2016 US presidential campaign. Using qualitative media analysis as our method, we examined coverage in the Washington Post and New York Times. Our analysis provides insight into the ways in which the sexual misconduct allegations against Trump were framed in partisan terms and as, foremost, a political issue; we refer to this as the politicization of sexual misconduct. We argue that the politicization of sexual misconduct operates as a form of symbolic annihilation to trivialize and omit victims’ experiences in media coverage and we draw on empirical data to identify four rhetorical processes that comprise the politicization of sexual misconduct: (1) focus on the character of the accused (rather than harm to victims); (2) comparing severity of allegations relative to other politicians; (3) leveraging victim stories for political gain; and (4) dismissal of allegations as politically motivated lies. Ironically, however, our findings also reveal that coverage of sexual misconduct throughout the 2016 campaign provided an unforeseen context for dozens of women to publicly narrate their own stories—in an attempt to be heard—the consequences of which, we suggest, set the conditions for a wave of women coming forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against powerful men.

Threat, Mobilization, and Latino Voting in the 2018 Election

AbstractThroughout the 2016 US presidential campaign and the first 2 years of his presidency, Donald Trump has repeatedly dehumanized immigrants in pursuit of more restrictive immigration policies. Despite the common perception that this threat should increase the political mobilization of Latino voters, existing research has yielded mixed findings. In this article, we argue that attention has to be paid to both threatening climate and mobilization. We examine Latino voting in the 2018 midterm election using both aggregate election data from 2014 and 2018 as well as a large 10-week tracking poll (n=2767) of Latinos during the last 2 months of the 2018 election. We show that, compared to 2014, the number of ballots cast by Latinos increased substantially. Using the tracking poll, however, we show that threat alone did not appear to be sufficient to mobilize Latino voters in the 2018 election. It is threat combined with mobilization, rather, that increased Latino voting. We discuss implications for future Latino political participation in the US.

Does US partisan conflict affect US–China bilateral trade?

It is well known that the US political parties hold opposing views on many economic policies and foreign policies. Since China has become the largest trading partner of the US, the operation of the US–China bilateral relationship has developed into an essential and sensitive political issue that has been widely discussed in the recent US presidential election campaigns. Therefore, the understanding of the effects of partisan conflicts on the US–China trade is crucial to improving our knowledge of the international transmission of political uncertainty. Using a recent US partisan conflict index provided by Azzimonti (2014), we investigate those effects employing a structural VAR model and find that a one standard deviation shock to US partisan conflict is associated with a 2% increase in the US exports to China and a 2% reduction in its imports from China. Such effects are still significant after one year. The results are robust across various combinations of variables, models and sample periods. Further, our findings indicate that partisan conflicts in the US may reduce its trade deficit with China.