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I got 40 million in my pocket: A functional idea analysis on a selection of President Donald J. Trump’s Tweets in relation to political populist theories

Lafvas Devismes, Rémi LU (2018) STVK02 20172
Department of Political Science
Abstract
Through a functional idea analysis, this study explores and discuss what possible strategies President Donald J. Trump has on Twitter based on a selection of Mr. Trump’s tweets. The material is based on six tweets within three policy categories (Healthcare, the U.S./Mexican Border Wall and the Media) with two tweets in each category. The tweets were selected from the highest respectively lowest amount of retweets. The methods for the functional idea analysis are based on Evert Vedung’s theories and the theoretical framework is based on theories on political populism.
The assumption was that President Trump uses populist rhetorical strategies in the tweets with the highest amount of retweets. In the least retweeted messages, the assumption... (More)
Through a functional idea analysis, this study explores and discuss what possible strategies President Donald J. Trump has on Twitter based on a selection of Mr. Trump’s tweets. The material is based on six tweets within three policy categories (Healthcare, the U.S./Mexican Border Wall and the Media) with two tweets in each category. The tweets were selected from the highest respectively lowest amount of retweets. The methods for the functional idea analysis are based on Evert Vedung’s theories and the theoretical framework is based on theories on political populism.
The assumption was that President Trump uses populist rhetorical strategies in the tweets with the highest amount of retweets. In the least retweeted messages, the assumption was to find less populist strategies. The purpose of this study was to explore the functions of the tweets through the lens of populism in order to examine what can be said on Mr. Trump’s rhetorical approaches on Twitter. The findings show that Trump uses rhetorical populism throughout the material, regardless how many retweets the message had. Through the functional idea analysis and political populist
theories, this study finds that the selected material consists of classic populist rhetorics which are strategically outlined in order to cover facts behind often antiestablishment arguments. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Lafvas Devismes, Rémi LU
supervisor
organization
course
STVK02 20172
year
type
M2 - Bachelor Degree
subject
keywords
Donald Trump, Twitter, populism, political rhetorics, idea analysis, communication, USA, technology, rhetorics
language
English
id
8931045
date added to LUP
2018-08-24 09:12:43
date last changed
2018-08-24 09:12:43
@misc{8931045,
  abstract     = {{Through a functional idea analysis, this study explores and discuss what possible strategies President Donald J. Trump has on Twitter based on a selection of Mr. Trump’s tweets. The material is based on six tweets within three policy categories (Healthcare, the U.S./Mexican Border Wall and the Media) with two tweets in each category. The tweets were selected from the highest respectively lowest amount of retweets. The methods for the functional idea analysis are based on Evert Vedung’s theories and the theoretical framework is based on theories on political populism.
The assumption was that President Trump uses populist rhetorical strategies in the tweets with the highest amount of retweets. In the least retweeted messages, the assumption was to find less populist strategies. The purpose of this study was to explore the functions of the tweets through the lens of populism in order to examine what can be said on Mr. Trump’s rhetorical approaches on Twitter. The findings show that Trump uses rhetorical populism throughout the material, regardless how many retweets the message had. Through the functional idea analysis and political populist
theories, this study finds that the selected material consists of classic populist rhetorics which are strategically outlined in order to cover facts behind often antiestablishment arguments.}},
  author       = {{Lafvas Devismes, Rémi}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{I got 40 million in my pocket: A functional idea analysis on a selection of President Donald J. Trump’s Tweets in relation to political populist theories}},
  year         = {{2018}},
}