The Twittering Presidents
An analysis of tweets from @BarackObama and @realDonaldTrump
Peter Wignell | Curtin University
Sabine Tan | Curtin University
Kay L. O’Halloran | University of Liverpool
Kevin Chai | Curtin University
This paper uses a Systemic Functional Multimodal Discourse Analysis (SF-MDA) approach to analyse tweets from the Twitter
accounts of Presidents Barack Obama (@Barack Obama) and Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump). The tweets were posted during the last nine months
of President Obama’s effective presidency and the first nine months of President Trump’s presidency. The tweets are analysed using automated
text analysis which is interpreted through an SF-MDA lens, supplemented by manual analysis. The analysis examines ideational and
interpersonal emphasis in the tweets with the aim of showing how the composition and content construct a view of how each president and his
presidency are presented to the public. The findings suggest marked contrasts in presidential style with President Trump foregrounding the
interpersonal while President Obama foregrounds the ideational. Where President Trump presents as self-promoting, autocratic, opinionated
and igniting discord in his tweets, President Obama presents as democratic, moderate, restrained and seeking social harmony.
Keywords: multimodal discourse analysis, social media, US politics, Twitter, systemic functional linguistics
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Literature Review
- 3.Analysis of tweets from @BarackObama and @realDonaldTrump: A multimodal perspective
- 4.Theoretical model, data and method
- 4.1Theoretical model
- 4.2Data
- 4.3Method
- 5.Findings and Discussion
- 5.1Automated analyses
- Categories
- Keywords
- Sentiment
- Emotion
- 5.2Manual Analyses
- First person pronouns
- Attitude
- 5.3Multimodal tweets
- 5.1Automated analyses
- 6.Summary and findings
- Notes
-
References
Published online: 18 November 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.19046.wig
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlp.19046.wig
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