An Incoherent Truth: Truth Social and democracy in our populist age
(2024) MKVM13 20241Department of Communication and Media
Media and Communication Studies
- Abstract
- In January of 2021, the former President of the United States was banned from nearly every social media platform as a result of his actions during the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. After a year of development, Trump’s company, Trump Media and Technology Group, released Truth Social, a Trump-centric social media platform, in February 2022. Although Trump’s bans from social media have mostly expired, Truth Social now serves as Trump’s platform of choice in the lead up to the 2024 election. Now, in early 2024, Trump consistently posts multiple times per day on his platform, while rarely engaging with mainstream social media platforms at all. Naturally, as Truth Social is heavily linked to the former president, its users... (More)
- In January of 2021, the former President of the United States was banned from nearly every social media platform as a result of his actions during the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. After a year of development, Trump’s company, Trump Media and Technology Group, released Truth Social, a Trump-centric social media platform, in February 2022. Although Trump’s bans from social media have mostly expired, Truth Social now serves as Trump’s platform of choice in the lead up to the 2024 election. Now, in early 2024, Trump consistently posts multiple times per day on his platform, while rarely engaging with mainstream social media platforms at all. Naturally, as Truth Social is heavily linked to the former president, its users overwhelmingly support Trump and his politics. As Truth Social brands itself as a platform that prioritizes free speech above all else, it has gained a reputation for harboring some of Trump’s most radical supporters.
This digital ethnographic case study will examine Truth Social’s emergence amidst a global wave of populist sentiment. As distrust and disillusionment reach historic levels in liberal democracies, populism has slowly pervaded and infected democracies across the globe. With a firm position in populist history, Trump’s ascendance to political power was significantly aided by social media platforms. Although the platforms used in Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns have been the subject of great scholarly interest and study, Truth Social is emerging as an important and under-researched factor in the 2024 election. Just as Twitter and Facebook were effectively used to build Trump’s base in past elections, Trump is attempting to use Truth Social’s echo chamber to further radicalize this base. This research aims to observe the discourse happening on Truth Social, and analyze the potential implications on democracy, more generally.
Social media has destructive potential in facilitating populism’s growth. Social media allows populists to take advantage of oversimplified solutions to policy problems in the form of divisive politics. This division is definitional to populism and advocates for “the people” as defenders against opposing specific groups of evil doers. Such characterizations leave little room for nuanced policy discussion, as every deliberation is boiled down to “us vs. them.” Naturally, this is antithetical to liberal democracy, which upholds civil and minority rights as foundational. This case study will examine Truth Social as an echo chamber through theories on democracy and populism. The research reaches the conclusion that Truth Social represents a threat to democracy, as part of a populist tradition attacking against democratic norms. A new political dimension is proposed, which defines epistocracy, a re-emerging idea in democratic literature, as oppositional to populism. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9151533
- author
- Kolk, Bryce LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- MKVM13 20241
- year
- 2024
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Democracy, Populism, Truth Social, Echo Chambers, Epistocracy, Alt-Tech
- language
- English
- id
- 9151533
- date added to LUP
- 2024-06-12 08:32:49
- date last changed
- 2024-06-12 08:32:49
@misc{9151533,
abstract = {{In January of 2021, the former President of the United States was banned from nearly every social media platform as a result of his actions during the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. After a year of development, Trump’s company, Trump Media and Technology Group, released Truth Social, a Trump-centric social media platform, in February 2022. Although Trump’s bans from social media have mostly expired, Truth Social now serves as Trump’s platform of choice in the lead up to the 2024 election. Now, in early 2024, Trump consistently posts multiple times per day on his platform, while rarely engaging with mainstream social media platforms at all. Naturally, as Truth Social is heavily linked to the former president, its users overwhelmingly support Trump and his politics. As Truth Social brands itself as a platform that prioritizes free speech above all else, it has gained a reputation for harboring some of Trump’s most radical supporters.
This digital ethnographic case study will examine Truth Social’s emergence amidst a global wave of populist sentiment. As distrust and disillusionment reach historic levels in liberal democracies, populism has slowly pervaded and infected democracies across the globe. With a firm position in populist history, Trump’s ascendance to political power was significantly aided by social media platforms. Although the platforms used in Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns have been the subject of great scholarly interest and study, Truth Social is emerging as an important and under-researched factor in the 2024 election. Just as Twitter and Facebook were effectively used to build Trump’s base in past elections, Trump is attempting to use Truth Social’s echo chamber to further radicalize this base. This research aims to observe the discourse happening on Truth Social, and analyze the potential implications on democracy, more generally.
Social media has destructive potential in facilitating populism’s growth. Social media allows populists to take advantage of oversimplified solutions to policy problems in the form of divisive politics. This division is definitional to populism and advocates for “the people” as defenders against opposing specific groups of evil doers. Such characterizations leave little room for nuanced policy discussion, as every deliberation is boiled down to “us vs. them.” Naturally, this is antithetical to liberal democracy, which upholds civil and minority rights as foundational. This case study will examine Truth Social as an echo chamber through theories on democracy and populism. The research reaches the conclusion that Truth Social represents a threat to democracy, as part of a populist tradition attacking against democratic norms. A new political dimension is proposed, which defines epistocracy, a re-emerging idea in democratic literature, as oppositional to populism.}},
author = {{Kolk, Bryce}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{An Incoherent Truth: Truth Social and democracy in our populist age}},
year = {{2024}},
}