Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Addressing Women and Minorities on Social Media by the 2016 U.S. Presidential Candidates

Addressing Women and Minorities on Social Media by the 2016 U.S. Presidential Candidates Donald Trump’s bombastic statements regarding women and minorities were a constant theme in the 2016 presidential election and attracted attention from both the mainstream media and his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Given the increasing use of social networking sites among political actors and the public, as well as the focus given to women and minorities in the 2016 election, we utilize a content analysis of presidential candidates’ social media activity in the months preceding the election in order to better understand how the candidates addressed women and minorities. We ultimately find that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton out-posted Trump in both positive and negative content in the categories of women’s issues; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues; race; and immigration. However, this is not the case with issues involving crime and police, which was a lens through which Trump was more likely to approach race-related issues. In many instances, the candidates also appeared to strategically target content-specific posts to the social media platforms where they would be most likely to be seen by women or the minority group most closely related to the post’s content. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Social Science Computer Review SAGE

Addressing Women and Minorities on Social Media by the 2016 U.S. Presidential Candidates

Loading next page...
 
/lp/sage/addressing-women-and-minorities-on-social-media-by-the-2016-u-s-KG0YABm1ph
Publisher
SAGE
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2018
ISSN
0894-4393
eISSN
1552-8286
DOI
10.1177/0894439318779342
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Donald Trump’s bombastic statements regarding women and minorities were a constant theme in the 2016 presidential election and attracted attention from both the mainstream media and his opponent, Hillary Clinton. Given the increasing use of social networking sites among political actors and the public, as well as the focus given to women and minorities in the 2016 election, we utilize a content analysis of presidential candidates’ social media activity in the months preceding the election in order to better understand how the candidates addressed women and minorities. We ultimately find that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton out-posted Trump in both positive and negative content in the categories of women’s issues; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues; race; and immigration. However, this is not the case with issues involving crime and police, which was a lens through which Trump was more likely to approach race-related issues. In many instances, the candidates also appeared to strategically target content-specific posts to the social media platforms where they would be most likely to be seen by women or the minority group most closely related to the post’s content.

Journal

Social Science Computer ReviewSAGE

Published: Aug 1, 2019

There are no references for this article.