The medium made the Man: Did Donald Trump’s use of social networks influence American voters in US election 2016?

 
3 
Introduction 
  
The surprising victory of U.S. President Donald Trump in 2016 – who was at every 
time and in every measure far behind democratic Hillary Clinton – signed a 
revolutionary change in history. How could an anti-establishment, outrageous, arrogant, 
sexist, non-experienced man like Trump enter the White House and govern the most 
powerful nation on Earth? This thesis aims to make clear how 45
th
 U.S. President 
Trump massively exploited social networks to compete against Clinton in the 
presidential race, thus trying to underline the importance of today’s technological 
innovations as unquestionable tools to run an efficient electoral campaign. 
After the United States of America turned into a democracy and elected George 
Washington as the first President in 1788, the need for electoral campaigns were non-
existent; candidates were called to serve the nation out of duty and desire of the people. 
Today, presidential nominees are expected to be everywhere, tour across the country, 
appear on television and newspapers, give speeches, be photographed, shake hands, and 
smile at children. They enter the presidential race almost two years before Election Day 
and they fight tooth and nail until the end to enter the oval office. In the first pages, the 
work will illustrate a brief story of electoral campaigns’ evolution, deepening the 
significant changes American campaigns have undergone. 
As presidential candidates have to convince voters of their worth, a solid strategy 
to adhere to all along the exhausting race is needed. Like a business, Trump’s campaign 
staff won the tycoon The Presidency by planning a successful strategy based on their 
resources and competences, their mission and ambitious vision, and their smooth and 
efficient staff organization. At this point, the thesis will try to construct the possible 
strategy Trump’s team might have followed during the general election cycle. 
It is acknowledged that Trump mastered social media more than any other 
presidential candidate before him. The last two chapters explain how Facebook and 
Twitter – the most used social networks in the US – might have contributed to swing 
election results in favour of the multi-billionaire Donald. 
2016 US Presidential elections will be remembered as the elections of the fake 
news; the unprecedented polarization between two Americas; the aggressive, racist, 
homophobic, sexist statements; the post-truth society; and the exasperated news media
 
4 
coverage. Most importantly, they will be memorable because social media – 
technological innovations aimed to connect (rather than divide) people – amplified and 
fostered Americans’ fears and insecurities, Trump’s biggest source of power. 
 
 
Chapter 1. 
ELECTORAL CAMPAIGNS: STRATEGIC FACTORS AND 
COMMUNICATION TOOLS 
 
 
1.1 Behind electoral campaigns: pure strategy to win public support 
 
When observing the most successful people who have come to dominate their sectors – 
sports, music, politics, business etc. – most of the times it is not because of their initial 
extraordinary talent and uniqueness, nor because of fate. The winning asset, instead, is 
the implementation of a precise, well-studied strategy as a bridging path towards their 
ambitious goals (Grant, 2005). 
Generally, the strategy “implies a set of strategic options from which one chooses 
course of action to achieve advantage” (Simply Strategic Planning, n.d.). The term 
originated from the world of the wars and battles due to the necessity of peoples to 
defeat their enemies. In fact, without enemies, the need for a strategy is non-existent, as 
it would be totally unnecessary to achieve advantage over non-existing opponents. 
Today, the same concept rules business organizations, as “the sole purpose of strategy is 
to enable a company to gain, as efficiently as possible, a sustainable edge over its 
competitors. When no competition exists, there is no need to strategize” (Horwath, 
2006). Similarly, political candidates ferociously battle each other to win public 
support.	
  
“Strategy is, simply, the art and science of options. It is a matter of understanding 
current options, creating new ones, and choosing among them” (Strategic Thinking,
 
5 
n.d.). To understand the current options is to comprehend four basic factors – the 
foundation necessary to build a solid strategy.	
  
 
1. The mission and the vision: in business terms, a mission statement explains how 
the company will get to where it wants to be. It clarifies the purpose and 
primary goals related to customer needs. A vision statement talks bout where 
the company aims to be in the future. It expresses the purpose and the values 
backing it. 
2. The competitive environment: it is the external system –sector/s – where a 
company competes and operates. The sector analysis follows two fundamental 
steps – group strategy and business strategy. The first aims to fix the sector/s 
where the company wants to operate, while the latter aims to identify the 
critical success factors to gain a competitive advantage over other similar 
businesses. 
3. The resources and competences: resources can be separated into tangible assets 
(cash, plants and equipment), intangible assets (patents, brands, market research 
findings) and human assets (skills and knowledge). Resources alone are not a 
source of profitability if they are not implemented by adequate capabilities and 
competences, which refer to the company’s ability to launch a specific activity. 
4. The organizational structure: it determines the distribution, control, and 
coordination of the roles, power and responsibilities together with the 
information flow between the different levels of management (Grant, 2005). 
 
These four strategic factors have been guiding both large corporations and small 
businesses since the increasing competitiveness in markets and environment instability 
in the Seventies required flexible, short-term action plans instead of the old-fashioned 
business planning (Grant, 2005). In the light of the above strategic factors, it is not 
difficult to notice how a candidate’s team running an electoral campaign has much in 
common with a business organization. Both strive for a precise mission relying on their 
resources and structures while being aware of the competitors. 
As previously stated, successful people generally thrive because of the 
implementation of an efficient strategy and electoral campaigns represent perhaps the
 
6 
most suitable example to this. Political candidates running for office – especially those 
new in politics – have to win popular support by trying to convince voters that they are 
going to do well if they are elected. Thus, the electorate shows at the polls and votes its 
favourite candidate relying basically on the trust and likelihood instead of his/her actual 
skills in managing political affairs (as they are not going to be tested until the 
candidate’s effective victory). According to Grant (2005), there is no doubt that 
adopting a disarming strategy in electoral campaigns nowadays reveals pivotal in 
swinging the final results. 
 
 
1.2 The evolution of electoral campaigns 
 
According to Blumler and Kavanagh (1999), political communication in many western 
democracies appears to have passed through three successive (if overlapping) ages in 
the post-war period. Each phase differs in terms of citizens’ perception of politics, 
technological evolution and change in political structures. 
The first stage is called ‘pre-modern’ phase: the years immediately after Second 
World War were those of the Golden Age of parties. In these decades, “political parties 
were the prime source of initiatives and debate for social reform and many voters 
related to politics through more or less firm and long-lasting party identifications” 
(Blumler et al. 1999, p. 211). Moreover, people’s trust in political institutions created 
consensus and political communication was shaped by people’s physical interaction and 
personal experiences (Cepernich, 2017). 
Going further on the time line, political communication entered the ‘modern’ 
phase: with the invention of television in the Sixties, the political debate was indirectly 
mediated to a huger population. As consequence, political actors struggled to capture 
media attention to spread their message while public interest in politics as well as 
confidence in parties slumped. Mediatisation was the source of such political 
disaffiliation: the electorate turned into a silent audience observing the political 
spectacle on the little screen without the possibility to interact with it. Consequentially, 
growing percentages of abstentionists and rising disaffiliation to parties were the most 
critical effects among western democracies (Cepernich, 2017). The television opened
 
7 
the doors to the celebrity politics, where there was no more reason for parties to exist 
and all spotlights pointed on the political leader – the showman – who looked for 
professional consultancy teams, marketing strategists and pollsters to enhance his image 
in television and collect approval. The “homo videns” theory reported in Cepernich’s 
writing (2017), explains this perfectly. In the aftermath of television, responsible for the 
supremacy of images on reading, the homo sapiens’ cognitive structure resulted poorer 
and proved to lean towards apathy and passivity. 
The development from broadcasting to narrowcasting television in the Seventies 
boosted the communication system: a diverse flow of information aimed to target 
portions of consumers with different interests (Cepernich, 2017). Accordingly, the 
leader leaned towards the usage of a simplistic and understandable language, as the goal 
was to deliver the message to a broader and diverse electorate “that was previously 
more difficult to reach and less heavily exposed to message flows” (Blumler et al. 1999, 
p. 212). 
Such preconditions catapulted electoral campaigns into the third evolutionary 
phase – the ‘post-modern’ age – whose period matches the birth of Internet in the ‘90s. 
Beyond mass media, political news, information, and ideas are circulated via World 
Wide Web. 
Cepernich (2017) splits the evolution of digitalized political communication in 
three different phases too. 
1. At the beginning, the Internet was still a rudimental instrument and the only 
information channel available was the candidate’s website, which was a mere 
static communicative support with the intention to make the leader and his 
program visible to everybody. Political contents circulated only through a top-
down, broadcast information flow.  
2. The new millennium online interaction tools between politicians and citizens 
characterized the second stage of relationships between politics and the web. 
The scenario was completely different from that of a decade before: more than 
half of American voters were connected online. The web expanded its 
interactivity’s potential through the creation of new practices, such as the ‘html’ 
language and instant messaging software. Moreover, campaigns begun to 
develop online fundraising instruments and databases of electors, collecting