During his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump distinguished himself from other candidates via his hardline stances on issues of immigration. Using data from national surveys conducted between 2014 and 2019, we identify three key findings about views of immigrants among the American public during the Trump era. First, xenophobia was the strongest predictor of Americans’ feelings—anger, fear, pride, and hope—about Donald Trump during his time in office, and the second strongest predictor of feelings about the Republican party (after partisan identification). Second, the influence of Americans’ levels of xenophobia on their feelings about the Republican Party were significantly mediated by their feelings about Trump, especially for negative affect (anger and fear). Third, there has been a backlash against xenophobia, such that political independents and Democrats became significantly more favorable toward immigrants after 2016. As a result, views of immigrants have become more favorable overall, but also more politically polarized. These findings support and extend immigration backlash theory, contribute to research on affective polarization, and document consequential trends in contemporary American politics.

This study examines stakeholder relationships in the context of rumours of a forthcoming American Open Access mandate which surfaced in December 2019. Empirical material was gathered through the social media network Twitter, and through a data collection exercise of article-length documents on the subject. In the process of theme discovery, material was explored with manual scrutiny, software to produce visualisations of semantic maps and network analyses, and qualitative data analysis. The study is informed by the theoretical framework of boundary objects. The study finds that actor groupings central to the topic were academics, information professionals and Open Access publishers in support of the mandate, and subscription publishers opposed to it. Learned societies occupied the borderlands of the debate in a conflicted role of both publisher and academic champion. Themes uncovered through the study included nationalistic rhetoric, taxpayer value for money, financial imbalance in the publishing ecology, and representation of members by learned societies. The results are used to consider which elements of the communities might act as a boundary object between the groups of actors.

Some of the strongest predictors of voting for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election were Christian nationalism and antipathy toward Muslims and immigrants. We examine the interrelated influence of these three factors on Americans’ intentions to vote for Trump in 2020. Consistent with previous research, Christian nationalism and Islamophobia remained strong and significant predictors of intention to vote for Trump; however, the effect of xenophobia was stronger. Further, xenophobia and Islamophobia significantly and substantially mediated the effects of Christian nationalism. Consequently, though Christian nationalism remains theoretically and empirically distinct as a cultural framework, its influence on intending to vote for Trump in 2020 is intimately connected to fears about ethnoracial outsiders. In the penultimate year before Trump’s reelection campaign, the strongest predictors of supporting Trump, in order of magnitude, were political party, xenophobia, identifying as African American (negative), political ideology, Christian nationalism, and Islamophobia.

The year 2020 started with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This socio-economic crisis has led to changes in our society as several restrictions were demanded, such as self-quarantining, wearing face masks and social distancing to limit the spread of the Coronavirus. This resulted in a high need for online communication. The United States of America has reached and maintained a high death rate in comparison to other countries. Therefore, this paper researches what are the characteristics of the U.S. President’s, Donald Trump, communication in relation to COVID-19. The paper reviews literature on Trump’s language and communication style, his political incorrectness, and his habits on Twitter communication during the election in 2016. Moreover, it describes theoretical key terms, such as political mediatization, networked society, and further uses Castells’ concept of mass self-communication as a framework for the content analysis. The resource for this analysis is Trump’s official Twitter account, where 4018 tweets were retrieved from March, April, February and June in 2020. Out of those tweets, 638 are COVID-19 related tweets. Key findings show that Trump is using a simple (casual) and offensive tone of voice in his tweets. His Twitter communication demonstrates attacking his opponents and others in a politically incorrect manner while praising himself. Along with negative partisanship and idealization of pressing issues with no coherent and factual arguments. Furthermore, he is using the pandemic as a tool for reaching his political goals, thus politicizing the COVID-19 pandemic on his Twitter account.

Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this study seeks to illustrate how Donald Trump’s Inauguration Address incorporates elements of power which are embedded in various forms of American exceptionalism. Since the American myth of exceptionalism does not necessarily reveal itself at first glance, this thesis traces its variety of roots back in American history. By doing so, it explains how this myth emerged, how it became infused with power and how Trump’s rhetoric keeps it alive. The theoretical framework of this study is built on Michel Foucault’s writing on power and van Dijk’s concept of ideology. In addition, this study introduces the idea of legitimising myths in the context of Social Dominance Theory to highlight the effect ideologies have on societies. This thesis finds that some references to American exceptionalism in Trump’s speech can be attributed to the Colonial era. More specifically, Trump’s call for social cohesion, his allusions to predestination, his image of civilisation and his language on American labour bear close resemblance to Puritan discourses. Further, the theme of nationalism and limited government run through his speech, both of which are integral to American history and the myth of exceptionalism. In line with the general goals of CDA, this study exemplifies how ideologically charged language needs to be contextualised socio-historically to expose its relationship with power.

2020 was the year of the American presidential election. Joe Biden, the former senator and vice president won against the incumbent president and business magnate Donald Trump. Because of the coronavirus it was an unusual election. Vote counting was not over on election night but continued a few more days and Donald Trump claimed the result to be false.  The study aims to understand what Swedish newspapers focused on under the American election 2020 and what they choose to frame from a political journalist perspective. We focused on four of the biggest Swedish newspapers to see how they differ and relate. To do that we used 29 articles from every newspaper, 116 in total and with help of framing theory and a quantitative content analysis we could find correlations between the four newspapers. Thanks to earlier studies we could compare how Donald Trump was portrayed in 2016 and what both Swedish and American media framed last election.  The study concluded that Donald Trump was mentioned more in the Swedish press than his opponent Joe Biden. None of the vice presidents were ever mentioned as much as the presidential candidates. The study also concluded that more articles focused on the political game more than the political issues, that the articles were more often neutral or negative than positive and that politicians were the most quoted.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This thesis analyzes the gender narrative surrounding the vice-presidency and the 2016 election. It reviews the traditional feminine gender roles assigned to the vice-presidency and as evidenced in Governor Mike Pence’s participation in a 60 Minutes interview, nomination speech at the 2016 national convention, and vice-presidential debate. Furthers the work of Bostdorff, who argued that the vice presidency has a traditional feminine role where vice-presidential figures and potential aspirants use strategies of celebration, confrontation, vindication, and submission to fulfill a gendered role in service to a highly masculine presidency. Suggests that the realities of the 2016 election allowed for these strategies, although in a different form given the nature of the campaign and a Trump candidacy.

This study aims to describe President Donald J. Trump’s emergency communication onTwitter in relation to two cases of emergency: The Corona pandemic and the alleged voterfraud in the presidential election of 2020. By applying two different sets of theoreticalperspectives, one ideological and one rationalistic, to the president’s emergencycommunication, the study also aims to find ways to understand what kind of motivation laysbehind the president’s communication. The studies research questions are as follows: 1. Howdoes President Trump communicate on Twitter in relation to the two cases of emergency? 2.How can Trump’s emergency communication be understood from an ideological perspective?3. How can Trump’s emergency communication be understood from a rationalisticperspective?The study is based on an abductive approach but grounded in Rubenstein’s (2015) definitionof the emergency claim and emergency politics. A qualitative content analysis was applied tothe president’s Twitter communication in relation to the two cases of emergency. 10% of thetweets that related to four search terms (covid, coronavirus, voter fraud and election) wasanalyzed to search for patterns of meaning in relationship to the two theoretical perspectives.The study finds that President Trump’s emergency communication can be described asvarying between the cases but ultimately be seen as a consequence of the president’s relationto the emergency. By applying the two theoretical perspectives on the two cases the study alsofinds that the best way to understand President Trump’s emergency communication is asmotivated by rationalism but grounded in arguments that refer to the American version of theconservative ideology.

The rightwing-populist movement has gained momentum in recent years throughout the western world. The recent spike of organized Islamic terror organization has been one of the root causes of the spark about the debate of what western culture actually is, which has resulted in a gain for the rightwing-populist movement and a normalization of populist Islamophobic rhetoric. This bachelor theses focuses on the portrayal of Islam by the US president, Donald J. Trump. The purpose of the study was to analyze how Donald Trump portrays Islam in some interviews and speeches and try to pinpoint in his rhetoric reasoning how he interprets Islam in the American context. To fulfill this purpose four different forms of speeches has been analyzed. The nature of the speeches is either a type of interview or where Trump talks as a lone speaker. The study aimed to offer an answer to how Islam becomes a politized phenomenon and to determine the narrative in Trumps statements and thereafter use that narrative to offer a perspective on the incitement of the established narrative. Therefore, to answer the question about the politization of Islam the study has worked with Jonas Lindbergs (2017) Religion in Nordic politics as a means to societal cohesion and Carolina Ivanescus (2010) Politicised religion and the religionisation of politics. Rogers Brubakers (2017) Between nationalism and civilzationism was used to offer a perspective on the incitement to Trumps reasoning that orientates around right-wing populist understanding of Western cultural values. Thus, were these theories the theoretical framework to this essays study. The methods used for the study was content analysis and narrative analysis. The narrative analysis, as explained was used to establish the narrative in Trumps statements while the content analysis was used a method to systematize the empiricism and to facilitate the process of coding of the material. The conclusion of the study is that Donald Trump uses Islam as a depicted threat to the American people and the American culture. Islam takes aim on majority group in America and threatens to implement new normative understandings that emerges from Islamic doctrine. The Christian identification of the American people is threatened and the secular spirit as well that is in impregnated in the American culture. In Trumps understanding the threat has reached a breaking point where he, as the leader of the country, is the sole solution to this dictated problem.

Diploma thesis is focused on the support of Latinos voters for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Hispanics in general are more supporters of the Democratic Party, so the increased support for Donald Trump proclaimed in media after the election has been surprising for many experts and public especially regarding Trump's rhetoric and his attacks on some Hispanic prominent figures. In the thesis, I discuss whether Donald Trump gained more Latinos support in the election. I argue that Donald Trump gained more Latino support in the election. The thesis is confirmed in the theoretical and practical part based on an analysis of composition of the Hispanic electorate, pre-election, and post-election surveys and through the analysis of counties with at least 70% concentration of Hispanic population. The thesis also deals with Donald Trump's election campaign and the motivation of Latinos to vote for the Republican candidate. Donald Trump tried to reach out Hispanic voters more than in 2016 through greater funding of political spots, greater representation of Latinos in the election team, debates targeting Latinos voters and other initiatives. These moves were symbolic rather than practical in nature. The voting of Latinos for Donald Trump was probably influenced by external factors - the...