Empowering the Party-Crasher: Donald J. Trump,the First 2016 GOP Presidential Debate,and the Twitter Marketplace for Political Campaigns

This article argues that an important political marketplace of keywords expands in social media around campaign events such as a debate; that rhetorical efforts to define the situation in which a campaign event occurs are met in this marketplace by user responses that more or less echo the keywords, thereby enhancing or diminishing the political power of their “caller” or speaker; and that social media monitoring platforms can enhance our understanding of public opinion influence competitions among candidates through the careful selection, tabulation, and inspection of words and phrases being voiced. In the case at hand, an analysis of Twitter volume data and a reading of a sample of 1200 tweets between July 30 and August 15, 2015, a period enveloping the first 2016 Republican presidential candidate debate on August 6, 2015, helps us understand how Donald J. Trump escaped political punishment from party and media elites for subverting Republican and U.S. norms of candidate behavior. Elite voices greatly disapproved of Trump’s debate performance and conduct, a traditional augury of declining public support. But the presence of social media voices enhanced Trump’s capacity to succeed with an insurgent marketing strategy, one he would continue into his election as president fifteen months later. Specifically, comparatively high user volume on a debate-oriented section of Twitter (i.e., posts with the hashtag #GOPDebate) for Trump’s name, slogan, and Twitter address, and for such advantageous keywords as “political correctness,” “Megyn Kelly,” and “illegal immigration” relative to terms and phrases favoring other candidates and Republicans as a whole indicates the presence of heavy and active popular support for Trump. The contents of the corresponding tweet sample exhibit Twitter-savvy techniques and populist stances by which the Trump campaign solicited that support: celebrity feuding, callouts to legacy media allies, featured fan comments, a blunt vernacular, and confrontational branding. The contents also illustrate ways in which users manifested their support: from the aforementioned high keyword volume to imitative behavior and the supplying of evidence to verify Trump’s contested claims during the debate.     

Male and female politicians on Twitter: A machine learning approach

How does the language of male and female politicians differ when they communicate directly with the public on social media? Do citizens address them differently? We apply Lasso logistic regression models to identify the linguistic features that most differentiate the language used by or addressed to male and female Spanish politicians. Male politicians use more words related to politics, sports, ideology and infrastructure, while female politicians talk about gender and social affairs. The choice of emojis varies greatly across genders. In a novel analysis of tweets written by citizens, we find evidence of gender-specific insults, and note that mentions of physical appearance and infantilising words are disproportionately found in text addressed to female politicians. The results suggest that politicians conform to gender stereotypes online and reveal ways in which citizens treat politicians differently depending on their gender.     

When the Party Comes to Town: Experiential Learning During a Presidential Nominating Convention

Winthrop University used its location in the Charlotte metropolitan area to develop a course that combined academic content with an experiential component during the Democratic National Convention. This article provides recommendations for planning logistics developing such a course for faculty who may wish to replicate this effort in future presidential election cycles.     

Introduction: Social Media,Political Marketing and the 2016 U.S. Election

This essay introduces the contributions of the volume “Social Media, Political Marketing and the 2016 U. S. Election.” Using a variety of methodological approaches, the authors investigate the communication strategies of the Democratic and Republican candidates for president together with the responses of their audience. Collectively, this research offers insights into how new communication technologies are changing both political marketing and the ways candidates and voters interact.     

Understanding the Social Media Strategies of U.S. Primary Candidates

This paper examines the social media strategies of candidates seeking their party’s nomination for the 2016 U.S. presidential election. We use textual analysis to understand what candidates focused on. We assess eight themes covered in Twitter posts. For example, Clinton focused on GUN CONTROL, while Sanders focused on climate change. Using Facebook data, we introduce a topic modeling approach, latent Dirichlet allocation, to the political marketing literature. This allows us to uncover what topics the candidates focus on without researcher intervention and, using a dynamic model, show how this changes over time. We note that Clinton’s focus on Trump increases toward the end of the primary campaign.     

Testing a Predictive Model of Voter Behavior on the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election

Abstract

Utilizing a predictive model of voter behavior, this study identified the motivations behind a sample of voters who cast a ballot for George W. Bush and AI Gore in the 2000 presidential campaign. The motivations of the voters were differentiated on the basis of the “value” they sought in a president. In other words, just as companies in the “commercial marketplace” have to create value to attract customers, so does a candidate in the “political marketplace” who is seeking to carve out a niche for himself that separates him from his competition. Pairwise discriminant analysis is used to identify the motivations behind the choice behavior of voters at both the candidate and party level. The results reveal the complimentary roles that the political party and each candidate's campaign organization played in their respective marketing strategies.     

现阶段国企基层党建工作的难点与亮点——关于上海国有服务性企业基层党建的调查与思考

国有企业党组织是党在国有企业开展工作的阵地,国有企业党的建设重心在基层,基层党组织在推动发展、服务群众、凝聚人心、促进和谐等方面发挥着重要作用。本文国有服务性企业基层党建为切入点,着重分析了国有服务性企业基层党建工作难点、亮点,认为由于企业经营环境的变化、员工思想诉求的多元化、党员队伍的素质问题、基层组织自身的原因等给国企基层党建工作带来了挑战,提出从解放思想、转变观念入手,强化主动服务意识,紧抓学习型党组织建设,创新活动内容方式,坚持物质激励和精神鼓励并重,以保证党组织参与决策、带头执行、有效监督,发挥政治核心作用。     

Intraparty Hostility: Social Identity,Subidentity, and the Hostile Media Effect in a Contested Primary

The hostile media effect (HME) has generally been tested in terms of in-groups and out-groups, with a “neutral” story in between. This ignores the nature of many social groups as comprising subgroups, often but not always sharing feelings of connectedness and purpose. In cases when bounded subgroups are at odds with one another, HME provides little guidance. A contested partisan primary provides such a case. This study takes identity centrality, candidate favorability, and perceived social network homogeneity as measures of partisanship and involvement, hypothesizing relationships between each and perceived bias against one’s candidate and party. Findings show that markers of candidate-focused social identity predict greater perceived bias against one’s candidate during the 2016 primary season, while party-focused identity fails to predict perceived bias against one’s party. This suggests that candidate support identity overrides plain partisanship during primaries, supporting concern that a heated primary might damage general election party unity. Subsequent postconvention findings suggest that the salience of candidate-focused identity fades, while homogeneity of one’s network regarding party support helps to make perceived hostility toward one’s party identity more salient. However, as campaigns become more candidate-centered, the contestation between nested candidate and party identities may grow fiercer.     

Populism and Connectivism: An Analysis of the Sanders and Trump Nomination Campaigns

This paper is an analysis of the Trump and Sanders’ campaigns for the presidential nomination of their respective parties. It studies the structure of the relationship between the campaign and its supporters through communication on each candidate’s Facebook page. While both campaigns have been termed populist, we differentiate populism from connectivism and develop an account of a connective campaign as a species of connective action. Whereas populism is predicated on a singular people, connectivity involves the acceptance and recognition of difference as a resource for political activity. Whereas populism involves a hierarchical authority relationship, connectivity is based on a reciprocal authority relationship. Finally, populism articulates an anti-establishment demand while connective campaigns demand for citizens to have the capacity for consequential engagement with political life. The empirical results demonstrate that connectivism and populism are distinct in practice and that these attributes hang together as two separate concepts. Further, we find that Trump’s campaign communications emphasize populist themes, for Sanders such themes are limited and in the shadow of connectivism.     

Politics in 140 Characters or Less: Campaign Communication,Network Interaction,and Political Participation on Twitter

The methods by which politicians and policy makers communicate with the public are constantly adapting to the ever-changing media environment. As part of this changing landscape, this study considers the case of Twitter. Specifically, the authors conduct a survey of political Twitter users, in order to understand their use of the medium and their political behaviors within it. Results indicate that political Twitter users are more interested in and engaged in politics in general and less trusting of the mainstream media. Moreover, the study investigates the extent to which followers of a campaign may affect its overall influence in the Twitterverse.     

News Norms and the Strategic Timing and Content of Candidate Messages

Abstract

In this paper, we ask what sets of factors influence the timing and the content of presidential candidate press releases. Utilizing a unique data set, we examine the influence of internal campaign factors as well as external media factors on campaign information dissemination during the invisible primary season. We find that both types of factors may influence the timing of press releases; as to content, however, media norms are less likely to alter a candidate's general strategic message, which is dictated by his competitive status and national stature.     

The Image is the Message: Instagram Marketing and the 2016 Presidential Primary Season

The 2016 presidential primary candidates expanded their social media marketing campaigns to include the image- and video-centered social network platform Instagram. To explore the role that images play in framing political character development and to identify which images received higher levels of engagement, content analyses were performed on the top seven primary candidates’ Instagram accounts. Results indicate that candidates most frequently employ the ideal candidate frame in their images, which also garnered the highest number of user likes and comments. Results also reveal that among Instagram image attributes, candidates frequently and successfully used text within their images, but filters were inconsistently applied across the candidates.     

Image repair in the aftermath of inaccurate polling: How the news media responded to getting it wrong in 1948 and 2016

The US presidential elections of 1948 and 2016 produced surprise outcomes when the predicted winners ended up losing the election. Using image repair theory, this article explains the strategies the media used to repair their image in light of predicting the wrong winner. Using a qualitative analysis of news coverage that immediately followed the 1948 and 2016 presidential elections, this study finds that the media utilized similar image repair strategies of offering explanations for poor information, highlighting the media’s good reporting, diminishing the harm caused by the inaccurate predictions, and justifying the inaccurate predictions of both elections. However, the media responses in 1948 and 2016 differed greatly in tone and in the utilization of a new attack strategy to deflect criticism of the media itself. These strategies suggest that media use of image restoration is limited because of the unique societal expectations placed on the press, and that the media’s inaccurate 2016 predictions and subsequent attack strategies may have been contributed to the heightened criticism of mainstream news.     

朋辈辅导与服务型党支部建设耦合研究

服务型党支部建设是当前高校学生党建工作的重要任务。朋辈辅导作为思想政治教育特殊而有效的形式为党建工作提供了理论依据和实践平台。基于朋辈辅导与服务型党支部建设的耦合关系、耦合体系、耦合度三个角度进行探讨和分析,形成集格局、意识、形式、内容、长效性和实效性为一体的服务型党支部建设六维实践体系。     

What’s Left and Who’s Right? A Q-method Study of Individual and Contextual Influences on the Meaning of Ideological Labels

Left–right semantics are commonly employed by scholars, the media, and politicians in reference to Latin American politics. Yet, how do citizens understand these terms and what determines the meanings they assign to them? I investigate the significance of left–right labels, as potential political heuristic devices, among and across a selected group of citizens in Mexico and Argentina. Subjective understandings of the left–right semantics were tapped using Q-sort methods. Analyses of these data reveal quite different conceptions across individuals and national contexts. Further, and as hypothesized in the text, the analyses demonstrate that ideological labels (a) reference valence issues, in addition to political actors and policy stances; (b) differ across contexts in ways that correspond to elite packaging; and, (c) vary by individual partisan leanings and political sophistication.     

I tweet like a white person tbh! #whitewashed: examining the language of internalized racism and the policing of ethnic identity on Twitter

Using data extracted from Twitter, this study analyzes the English expression whitewashed as it occurs with and without a hashtag (e.g.: #whitewashed vs. whitewashed) through corpus analysis. As whitewashed has evolved to take on racial connotations to mean being too assimilated to a dominant white culture, I investigate whether the presence of a hashtag has an effect on how often this racial meaning of English whitewashed is employed. Based on collocative data, the findings suggest that the use of #whitewashed carries a meaning predominately informed by internalized racism and works to bind ethnic minorities to racial stereotypes. The study explores #whitewashed as a metacomment on human behavior, as #whitewashed serves to characterize beliefs about what actions are considered socially marked when performing an ethnic identity. In contrast to #whitewashed is the colloquial expression fobby, which characterizes an individual as being “too ethnic”; both (#)whitewashed and (#)fobby are discussed in tandem in this paper, for they create a double bind that marks the boundaries of ethnic identity. In this paper, I suggest that Twitter users mediate the demands of internalized racism by using #whitewashed to mark their tweets.     

Political Brand Communities as Social Network Clusters: Winning and Trailing Candidates in the GOP 2016 Primary Elections

This study integrates a brand community theoretical framework and a social networks approach to the study of political marketing on social media. It analyzes Twitter activity by and about all Republican candidates during the month of January 2016 prior to the Iowa primary caucus. Specifically, it identifies key patterns of information flow and political brand community emergence surrounding each candidate as well as brand social mediators who play influential roles in content flow. Findings detect network clusters - subgroups of siloed users - who converse to exchange information with one another rather than with disconnected others in any given political brand community. We classify these clusters in two groups: direct communities that surround a brand – here, a candidate – and indirect communities that consist of users who talk about the political brands but are not directly connected to the brand. Within this fragmented community structure, brand social mediators have the power to bridge direct and indirect brand communities across the network. Among the winning and trailing brand communities, different sets of brand social mediators, patterns of information flow, and network structures emerge. The findings suggest that the more successful a political brand is in voter polls, the weaker the social ties and relationships are within the brand communities. The interactions between political brands and their direct vs. indirect communities also exhibit different patterns of information flow. While direct brand communities demonstrate a higher level of reciprocity, indirect brand communities show a higher level of density. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Enoch Powell and the Conservative Party: Reflections on an Ambiguous Legacy

This article examines Enoch Powell's ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in relation to the Conservative party. Powell's speech created an additional challenge to a Conservative party already weakened by the loss of the 1964 and 1966 elections and by the failure of the newly elected leader, Edward Heath, to impress his authority decisively on the party. Powell had some parliamentary support but his real following was concentrated in the Conservative grass roots. Powell lost the support of the liberal‐minded Shadow Cabinet; but after 1968 the Conservatives nevertheless moved to the right on the issue, especially after Mrs. Thatcher became leader in 1975. His speech has cast a long shadow as the party has sought to modernise in more recent times and to appeal to a more racially diverse electorate.     

新中国成立以来党的四条总路线对我国经济社会发展的影响

党的基本路线是党和国家在一定历史时期为解决社会主要矛盾,实现其政治目标而制定的基本方针和政策,是制定和执行各项具体工作、路线和政策的依据。新中国以来我党先后制定了四条基本路线,对我国经济社会的发展产生了巨大的影响,通过研究,试图探寻其中的经验和教训。     

新时期加强大学生党建工作的探索与思考

高校是社会主义接班人和建设者的重要培养基地,大学生党建工作则是高校党建工作的核心。尤其在新时期,大学生党建工作的重要性更加突出,然而新时期大学生党建工作却存在诸多问题。对此,提出了进一步提升大学生党建工作的有效措施:统筹协调,强化党建工作领导机制;结合工作实践,强化组织管理;科学设置大学生党支部,充分发挥其战斗堡垒作用;积极推进党建评估,以评促建,以评促优。