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What is Donald Trump as a Brand? Public Opinion on the 45th US President and His Second Impeachment in American Social Media Discussions

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Proceedings of Topical Issues in International Political Geography (TIPG 2021)

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Abstract

This work is dedicated to analysis of an opinion expression as a basic category when studying online deliberative practices. The author investigates (1) what opinion people do express on D. Trump and his second impeachment in the discussions on Facebook pages of politically polarized American media outlets; (2) how people characterize D. Trump as a brand in these Facebook discussions. The empirical material is online discussions on D. Trump and his second impeachment conducted on the pages of four American media outlets distributed by political affiliation to parties: conservative Washington Times and Fox News; liberal New York Times and MSNBC. To achieve research objectives, systemic content analysis on opinion expression is used. The paper concludes that (1) the more negative attitude to D. Trump and more support for his second impeachment are expressed in the discussions on Facebook pages of liberal media rather than conservative media. In political online conversations, Donald Trump as a brand (2) is predominately described by the following categories: in toilet/trashed; liar/cheater; traitor; destroyed; loser; mentally ill/sociopath; toast; domestic terrorist; dead; narcissistic; toxic.

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Acknowledgements

The research is supported by the Russian Science Foundation grant No. 22–18-00364 «Institutional Transformation of E-Participation Governance in Russia: a Study of Regional Peculiarities» (https://rscf.ru/project/22-18-00364/) and grant No. 21–18-00454 «Mediatized Communication and Modern Deliberative Process» (https://www.rscf.ru/project/21-18-00454/). The theoretical part is done in terms of grant No. 22–18-00364, the empirical part – grant No. 21–18-00454.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. HSE University, Moscow, Russia

    Daniil Volkovskii

  2. Saint-Petersburg State University, Saint Petersburg, Russia

    Daniil Volkovskii

  3. ITMO University, Saint Petersburg, Russia

    Daniil Volkovskii

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  1. Daniil Volkovskii
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Correspondence to Daniil Volkovskii .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. St. Petersburg State University, St Petersburg, Russia

    Radomir Bolgov

  2. St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Vadim Atnashev

  3. Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Yury Gladkiy

  4. University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

    Art Leete

  5. Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Alexey Tsyb

  6. Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, St. Petersburg, Russia

    Sergey Pogodin

  7. University of Memphis, Memphis, TN, USA

    Andrei Znamenski

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Volkovskii, D. (2023). What is Donald Trump as a Brand? Public Opinion on the 45th US President and His Second Impeachment in American Social Media Discussions. In: Bolgov, R., et al. Proceedings of Topical Issues in International Political Geography. TIPG 2021. Springer Geography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-20620-7_23

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