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Reviewing the Rhetoric of Donald Trump's Twitter of the 2016 Presidential Election

With the development of science and technology, political communication is not only through television, radio and other traditional media in 21st century and political communication through the Internet become an inevitable trend. It is worth noting that Twitter has become a popular tool in political campaigning. Political candidates, political parties, journalists and the public can be free to express political attitudes and opinions through Twitter, which also attracts the academic community on Twitter research. It is undeniable that, from the perspective of discourses rhetoric, the study of the process of political communication on social media is also very important. For the modern political movement, the Internet has become the latest media used by presidential candidates, and Donald Trump is one of the most influential politicians on Twitter. In this thesis, I focused on the rhetorical elements of Trump's tweets. The aim of this thesis is to analyze how Trump persuade the followers as well as convey the emotion for followers through rhetorical means and rhetorical techniques on Twitter, so that he successfully became the 45th president of the United States. In order to work out the questions of the thesis, I chose some of Trump’s tweets that can be considered the most representative parts. The time span was from October 9, 2016 to November 9, 2016. During this period, all the tweets, which were posted on Donald Trump’s official Twitter page (@realDonaldTrump) be analyzed. I used Rhetorical Theory and Rhetorical Method as well as the Rhetoric and Metaphor instrument of Critical Discourse Analysis theory to make a detailed study. Trump knew he needed to establish a close relationship with American citizens: connect with voters, show his political personality, and share his goals through the rhetoric. In this large -scale campaign, the Trump shaped the unprecedented 'Trump phenomenon' with his unique communication skills. Meanwhile, it shows that proficient language and rhetoric skills are enough to make a politician who has no advantage in any respect become an idol of politics and the public.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hj-36425
Date January 2017
CreatorsLiu, Chang
PublisherHögskolan för lärande och kommunikation, Högskolan i Jönköping, HLK, Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeStudent thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

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