How Does Donald Trump Use Social Media to Make Decisions

President Barack Obama meets with President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office on November. 10, ii days afterwards the election. Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP hibernate caption

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Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

President Barack Obama meets with President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Nov. 10, two days after the election.

Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

3 days after winning the presidency in 2008, President-elect Barack Obama held a press conference, taking questions from reporters. 3 days later on winning the presidency in 2016, President-elect Donald Trump turned to Twitter.

An unprecedented characteristic of Donald Trump's successful campaign for president was his personal use of Twitter and it has continued as Trump meets with advisers and potential members of his chiffonier. If this continues into Trump'due south presidency, the method will be new, just the approach will be in line with a long tradition of presidents going around the and so-called filter of the press.

Since Ballot Day, Trump tweeted a list of countries whose leaders he has spoken with earlier his team sent out a press release,

I accept recieved and taken calls from many foreign leaders despite what the declining @nytimes said. Russian federation, U.K., Red china, Kingdom of saudi arabia, Japan,

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November sixteen, 2016

Australia, New Zealand, and more. I am always available to them. @nytimes is just upset that they looked like fools in their coverage of me.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Nov 16, 2016

Trump mused about the electoral higher.

And, he'due south repeatedly used Twitter to air his grievances with the New York Times. (He calls information technology the "declining" New York Times, though the paper has reported a surge of new subscribers since Election Day.)

Wow, the @nytimes is losing thousands of subscribers because of their very poor and highly inaccurate coverage of the "Trump phenomena"

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November xiii, 2016

The failing @nytimes story is so totally wrong on transition. It is going and so smoothly. As well, I accept spoken to many foreign leaders.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) Nov 16, 2016

Trump hasn't held a press briefing since July, instead opting for the more controlled setting of interviews and of course Twitter, over which he has total control.

"I think I picked up yesterday 100,000 people," Trump said on CBS's lx Minutes, citing his growing legion of Twitter followers. "I'1000 non maxim I love it, but it does get the word out."

Trump cited information technology equally a method of "fighting back" against stories he considers inaccurate or bad.

hour correspondent Lesley Stahl pressed Trump on whether he would continue using twitter in the same way as president.

"I'm going to do very restrained, if I use it at all, I'm going to practise very restrained," Trump said. "I observe it tremendous. It's a modern course of communication. There should exist nothing you should exist ashamed of. It's — it's where it'due south at."

"Presidents desire to go their message out, unfiltered by the press," said Brendan Nyhan, a professor of regime at Dartmouth Higher who contributes to "The Upshot" at the New York Times. "In that sense, what Donald Trump is doing with social media is not new."

Simply Nyhan added that presidents have typically also spoken to the public via more traditional means like press conferences. Nyhan is concerned Trump may not detect other conventions and norms by presidents accept followed.

"The extent to which he uses social media to attack the media directly could be relatively unprecedented," said Nyhan. "FDR was non giving fireside chats about why the New York Times was a failing institution."

President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his first radio address, known later as a fireside conversation in March of 1933, in the midst of a crisis of confidence in American banks. The purpose was to reassure the public, straight. He would evangelize more two dozen of them over the class of his presidency.

President Dwight Eisenhower did televised fireside chats, held the first televised news conferences and created the White House TV studio.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt talks to the nation in a fireside chat from the White Firm in this November 1937 photo. Associated Press hide caption

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President Franklin D. Roosevelt talks to the nation in a fireside chat from the White House in this November 1937 photograph.

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President Ronald Reagan held prime time news conferences, carried alive on network TV.

President Obama's squad used social media, releasing its own highly produced videos and posting photos on Flickr rather than letting journalists into the room. And when he needed to sell the Affordable Care Deed to immature people, Obama sat downwards "Between Ii Ferns" with comedian Zach Galifianakis.

Each president used the latest applied science to go around the filter and get directly to the American people in the way that best suited their strengths.

"In a sense, I see information technology as an extension of what other presidents have washed," said Martha Joynt Kumar, in regards to Trump'southward tweeting. She'southward a political scientist at Towson University and director of the White Business firm Transition Project. "They've used the resources that helped them win the presidency. And so why change."

When President Obama needed to pitch the Affordable Care Act to young people, he turned to the web series Between Two Ferns.

YouTube

Concluding week, when Trump met with President Obama at the White Firm, reporters who were let in to document the final moments shouted questions, every bit they often do.

Obama offered some communication to his successor. "Don't respond questions when they merely start yelling at you," Obama said before telling the reporters it was time to go.

Administrations have a way of edifice on each other when it comes to limiting press admission. Only Kumar thinks, eventually, a president Trump volition observe the limits of his favorite medium. Twitter is skillful for announcements and pronouncements — for feuding even. Just Kumar argues that it'southward not so optimal for selling policy.

"People want to see a president," Kumar said. "They want to hear a president. Take his measure and that's not something that's suitable for Twitter. Announcements are, but explaining the guts of policy isn't."

FDR used his fireside chats to explain policy without having reporters condense and interpret his message. Just his administration was also the start to take a press puddle, a small group of reporters that follows and documents the president's movements. Information technology's something that, thus far, President-elect Trump has not accepted, though his staff said they are working on it. Nyhan said there are no laws requiring it, and public opinion won't provide much pressure either.

"We tin can't look the public to exist outraged that Donald Trump didn't follow the lid that his staff gave to the media before he went out for a steak dinner," Nyhan said, referring to a recent night out Trump took without telling reporters. "No one cares. The trouble is that the principle of elected officials existence accountable to the public through the printing is one that's cardinal to our democracy."

Trump has only been president-elect for a little more than than a week, so it's probably too early on to judge whether he'll stick with tradition when it comes to interacting with the public and the press once he's in office.

On January 20th, Trump's team will be given the keys to the @POTUS twitter account. Though Trump actually has more followers on his own business relationship than the current president.

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