Russian-American Relations and the Mass Media Securitization of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in the American Press by Valeriia Alikina This thesis is focused on two issues relevant to Security Studies and Political Science: relations between the Russian Federation and the United States of America, which are currently experiencing yet another decline, and problematics of political journalism. It reviews the process of securitization of Russia through speech acts in the mass media of its historical opponent, the United States. First, the thesis provides a theoretical framework, securitization theory, introducing its main principles. To prove that the process of securitization indeed occurs, the method of discourse analysis is employed. The third chapter provides background information on the relations between the Soviet Union/Russia and the United States since the end of the World War II; this information is completed by the role mass media had in their affairs. The next chapter frames the issue of propaganda, elaborating on the meaning behind this concept, the "fake news" narrative, and the idealistic idea of media objectivity. In the fifth chapter, the case study, two processes of securitization are reviewed. The first one is the American mainstream media, namely ​The New York Times​ and ​The...

Topics associated with the United States' foreign policy towards the European Union have become increasingly intense in expert discussions since the turn of the millennium. This is due to several factors, primarily including the strength of the two clusters, on two shores of the Atlantic ocean. The work on the topic of transatlantic relations is divided into four chapters, where the first chapter deals with the theory of regionalism, the historical development of relations between the United States and the European Union, and the European Community. The conclusion of the chapter then anchors foreign policy actors from the US perspective. However, the thesis aim is to compare two US presidents and their relations with the EU. The selected presidents are Barack Obama and Donald Trump, when the 2012-2018 period is a crucial time for work. The aim of the thesis is to find answers to several questions, when the main one is whether and what difference is in the approach of Barack Obama and Donald Trump towards the EU. The paper sets out several criteria by its research, which will then be compared from the perspective of two presidents in order to show whether and how the policies of two consecutive presidents differ in EU relations.

This study focuses on the construction of American identity over time as it relates to U.S. foreign policy. It is based on the insights of poststructuralism and variants of discourse theory. In particular, the study depicts the historical development of identity representations within U.S. foreign policy discourse from 2008 to 2020, in order to demonstrate how the ongoing construction of identity enabled Donald Trump's disruptive foreign policy. Much of identity research in IR focuses on Self/Other relationships and understudies affirmative representations of identity. The current study fills this research gap by examining processes of affirmative linking in the construction of identity. The main results of the study found that the Trump administration's identity representations radically diverged from those of the Obama administration. The latter articulated America predominantly as a leader in the world, while the former reconstructed American identity as one of being a victim. However, two representations of American identity stayed constant: America as an inspiration to others and America as a force for good in the world.

Donald Trump's rhetoric of winners and losers has prompted dangerous division in the United States. It is well understood that Trump's divisive discourse appealed to white, blue-collar Americans who had become disillusioned with the political establishment. This study explores how Trump persuaded this audience by transitioning business communication principles, highlighted by his signature 'winners and losers' theme, into politics. Trump's use of the reality television show, The Apprentice, as a branding platform had the rhetorical effect that catapulted Trump's unique 'winning' brand back into the public's consciousness. While the principles of business rhetoric Trump used in The Apprentice were clearly transitioned to Twitter during Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, his tweets were unique in how they foregrounded the 'losers' he faced during the campaign. To illuminate Trump's branding strategy as both TV personality and political candidate, this analysis of Trump draws on Kenneth Burke's concept of consubstantiation and contemporary theories of business rhetoric, namely the idea of narrative-processing and its influence on consumers' connection with a brand. Because Trump constructs his brand with language that aims at restructuring America's social hierarchy, this study also uses critical discourse analysis (CDA) to understand the implications of power for both his audience and his opponents. This study concludes that while Trump's winning brand identity contributed to him winning the presidency, it also promotes male dominance and exacerbates political division in the United States.

This essay will examine the inauguration speech of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden. The aim is to analyze how political psychology can affect the design of the speeches and how globalization and nationalism can help understand what they really say in their speeches and what underlaying messages might be found. By doing qualitative ideational analyzes of the speeches, it is found that political psychology may affect the design of the speeches regarding the presidents’ personal backgrounds and the aim to create emotions with the citizens. Globalization and nationalism can be found in different ways in each president’s inauguration speech.

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What explains the difference between the county level vote received by President Donald Trump and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio in the 2016 Florida general election? Over the last couple of decades, Florida has earned a reputation for being a highly competitive state that impacts control of the White House and congress. As Florida’s electorate becomes increasingly diverse, will the Democratic Party begin to win more often as their usual base grows, or will the Republican Party figure out a way to remain competitive? The 2016 general election presents an opportunity to analyze the structure of support for two Republican candidates who represent different paths for the future of the Republican Party: Trump, who won Florida by just one percent, and seemingly alienated Hispanics and women with his comments and policy proposals; or Rubio, who won by about eight percent, a Cuban-American thought to be a fresh voice for the GOP and a bridge to Hispanic voters. Regression analysis is used to examine support for Trump and Rubio and also the difference in support between the candidates. The results indicate Trump did better in counties with larger percentages of lower educated whites, lower income households, and higher unemployment rate. Rubio performed better than Trump in counties with larger numbers of Cuban and non-Cuban Hispanics, women, and voters not registered with either major party. These results suggest that Democrats may gain ground in Florida over time if the Trump wing of the GOP takes over the party and if current population trends continue.

The subject of this bachelor thesis in political science has been to study how populistic rhetoric has evolved as a political phenomenon. The study has more specifically researched how presidential candidates have used populism in presidential debates. The bachelor thesis also studied if populistic rhetoric has changed over a time period between 1960 to 2016. To be able to study this, the essay has used critical discourse analysis to develop and understand how populism works. Ernesto Laclau’s On Populist Reason has also been used to create three models of understanding populism to develop the essays framework.  Through this the study has found that populistic rhetoric has come to be used more frequently in presidential debates. The study has also found that populistic rhetoric has changed form into a more aggressive style of rhetoric targeting the opponent’s character instead of the individual’s style of politics.

This essay utilizes Speech Act Theory to assess Donald Trump’s role in inciting the riot that took place in Washington D.C. on the 6th of January, 2021 and culminated with the attack on the Capitol building. For the purposes of the study a corpus was created with tweets collected from the Trump Twitter Archive. The tweets cover the span between the latest presidential election, on the 3rd of November, 2020, to the day of the attack. The corpus was read manually and sorted into themes. The themes that emerged show that: a) Trump was convinced of his victory, b) felt that the election was rigged, c) accused news networks, the Democrats and even prominent Republicans for his loss, and d) called the people for action. A quantitative method that identified the most common words in the corpus corroborated the identification of the described themes. The themes were compared to Speech Act Theory’s felicitous conditions for directive speech acts. The study found that Trump’s tweets satisfy the conditions for the successful directive speech acts of Order and Command, thus providing grounds to make the case that he was responsible for inciting the attack.

There is currently a global trend of democratic backsliding. The term democratic backsliding refers to the process in which a country undergoes a transition towards more authoritarian values and behavior. This process can weaken the democratic norms and institutions and can occur in democratic, hybrid, and nondemocratic regimes. Many countries around the world have been displaying nondemocratic tendencies for decades, but democratic backsliding is also transpiring in countries that have been democratic for an extended period of time. One country that has experienced forms of democratic backsliding is the United States of America, especially under the presidency of Donald Trump. The aim of this essay is to determine what authoritarian behavior Donald Trump engaged in during his presidential term from 2016 to 2020.  The theory on democratic backsliding by Bermeo as well as the four warning signs of authoritarian behavior by Levitsky and Ziblatt will be applied to conduct the research. The study is a qualitative case study, investigating each year of Donald Trump’s presidency. The results of this study indicate that Donald Trump did engage in authoritarian behavior during his presidential term.