Third International Conference on Communication & Media Studies

Abstract

In last few years present world leaders have discovered Twitter to be a powerful one-way broadcasting tool. What is more, especially Donald Trump’s tweets resonate well in a public and media sphere. It seems that Donald Trump’s activity on Twitter expresses the best Twiplomacy phenomenon meaning. This new trend appears to be a modern type of soft power (Nye, 2004:11). This concept of soft power is based on the ability to shape the preferences of others. This paper discusses results of empirical research which was conducted in the Laboratory of Media Studies at Warsaw University. We have analyzed all tweets published by Donald Trump between the 20th of January (inauguration of his presidency) to the 25th of March 2017 (D.Trump and his supporters resign to replace Obamacare with a new deal). Furthermore, we have analyzed all articles which contain words “Trump” and “Twitter” in all Polish nation-wide daily and weekly (almost sixty) newspapers. We wanted to find out how Donald Trump’s tweets are resonating in a Polish press discourse in a very crucial moment for a new President of the U.S., during his attempt to fulfill one of his most important campaign’s pledge, replacing Obamacare. According to tweets, we analyzed types of tweets, their popularity, their content, topics, tweets’ heroes, and finally their rhetorical aspect. In turn, in Polish press discourse we were analyzing what was the function of Trump’s tweets in articles, how they were presented, and finally how Trump’s Twiplomacy affects Polish press discourse and Polish journalists themselves.