The Role of Social Media in U.S. Presidential Elections : an Analysis of Donald Trump’s Self-Presentation on Twitter

This thesis aims to investigate Donald Trump’s uncommon use of social media, especially his use of Twitter, during his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump dismissed long-established communication standards of political communication, and people believe this was one of the reasons he won the U.S. presidential election. Therefore, the objective of this thesis is to better understand how Trump’s unusual use of Twitter contributed to his victory. Based on a variety of primary and secondary sources, this thesis describes and explains key elements of Trump’s communication strategy, especially his self-presentation as “the authentic candidate” and how his use of social media contributed to this image. This paper also presents an analysis of the 20 most retweeted tweets from Trump’s Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump, during his 2016 campaign (between June 16, 2015 and November 8, 2016). This analysis demonstrated that several elements from Trump’s tweets were conflicting with his self-presentation as “the authentic candidate”. After describing Trump’s communication approach and analyzing the 20 tweets, this thesis argues that Donald Trump’s way to communicate during his 2016 campaign was a well-elaborate performance, rather than a real display of genuineness.