Most 2016 Presidential Candidates Not Effective in the Use of Social Media Warfare

Candidates in the presidential primaries and the subsequent campaign for president of the United States were extensively followed in social media. Candidates also used social media warfare tactics in a variety of uncoordinated and random ways. Candidate messages on social media were as disjointed as the messages they relayed in debates and interviews. Most candidates could not hold together a prolonged discussion on how their positions compared with those of other candidates, instead they spent time bashing each other and bashing each other’s political parties. This practice ended up being far less than productive for most of the candidates. It was all more reminiscent of a barroom brawl or a playground melee than it was a run for the presidency.

Donald Trump was the clear leader in the volume of social media posts and in the number of Twitter followers. To illustrate the disparity between Trump and the many other candidates, a count of followers and tweets was taken over Labor Day weekend 2016 (the first weekend in September). Trump had 11.4 million followers and had posted approximately 33,000 tweets. This put Trump ahead of all other candidates, and he was given a score of 100 for the number of followers and number of tweets, as can be seen in Table 6.2.

The rest of the candidates with active accounts on Labor Day weekend were then ranked in terms of the percentage of followers and percentage of tweets compared to Trump. For example, Hillary Clinton had 76.23% of the followers that Trump had and she had made only 24.24% of the number of tweets that came from Trump’s account. On the other end of the continuum, Chris Christie had only 1.27% of the followers that Trump had and Christie had made only 9.09% of the number of tweets that came from Trump’s account.

On Facebook, Clinton had 5.8 million Likes on her official page and Trump had 10.6 million Likes for his official Facebook page over the Labor Day weekend. Trump had a button that said “SHOP NOW” on his Facebook page, which linked to the website address https://shop.donaldjtrump.com/ and invited people

Table 6.2 Candidate Comparative Ranking on Twitter, Labor Day Weekend 2016

to “CHECK OUT THE NEW GEAR” and purchase a variety of political paraphernalia. Clinton had a button that said “Sign Up” that allowed visitors to enter their e-mail address and zip code and then provided an opportunity to make a financial contribution.

On Instagram, Clinton had 2 million followers and Trump had 2.4 million followers during the same time frame. A Yahoo search showed that Clinton had 13 million search results and Trump had 13.9 million search results. These comparisons are shown in Table 6.3.

There was only a moderate change in followers and Likes for the two presidential candidates after early September. Facebook Likes for Trump increased by 400,000, for Mrs. Clinton they increased about 800,000. These are certainly significant counts, but although for Trump that was less than a 4% increase and for Clinton it was a 14% increase, Clinton had about 60% of the Facebook Likes that Trump had achieved. Increases in other counts were similarly modest. More details on the changes in social media statistics are shown in Table 6.4.

The social media presence of both Trump and Clinton continued to grow in late October 2016, just before the election and at just about equal rates. One observer commented that the number of Facebook pages with each of the candidate’s name in the title was increasing. This may have caused some confusion for fans as they were looking to Like the page of their favorite candidate (Table 6.5).

Table 6.3 Candidate Comparative Facebook Likes, Instagram Followers, and Yahoo Search Results, Labor Day Weekend 2016

Table 6.4 Candidate Social Media Status Update October 1, 2016

Table 6.5 Candidate Social Media Status Update Late October 2016