@realDonaldTrump: a brief content analysis

Juan Antonio Sánchez-Giménez | Head of Information Services, Elcano Royal
Institute | @Elcano_Juan; Evgueni Tchubykalo | CAMRI doctoral resesearcher in media
and communication, University of Westminster | @chubykalo, realinstitutoelcano.org;
article contains charts and a video; dated Feb. 15

Excerpt (from a 10-page pdf document):

Theme

Donald Trump has become the first US President to actively use his personal Twitter
channel regardless of any US public diplomacy strategy, with a direct impact on the
public policies defined by the US government and the White House.

Summary

During 2017, Donald Trump’s personal Twitter channel –@realDonaldTrump– has been
the main information resource chosen by the US President to generate opinion and
sentiment on US civil society and has become the White House’s public diplomacy tool
to have generated the most headlines in the media.

Given this new political and diplomatic scenario, several issues have arisen that need to
be considered to understand such a new phenomenon of political communication: is this
Trump’s personal branding strategy? And does it affect US public diplomacy? In order to
obtain answers we have focused on the President’s personal Twitter channel to analyse
the content of his activity and try to understand how US public diplomacy is affected by
the Trump Brand. ...

Conclusions

President Trump uses Twitter as an element of personal activity. In practice, there is no
difference in the President’s messages before and after being elected.

He mainly focuses on domestic issues in a partisan way, reinforcing his voting base.
When tweeting about foreign policy he has no institutional strategy to improve American
public diplomacy. Ultimately, public diplomacy is a tool to achieve foreign policy goals
not merely an instrument for self-promotion or advertising. Trump appears to feel like an
observer of the international arena, and not a leading actor. That explains his negative
feelings and unconventional ideas about Russia, Mexico, Qatar, the UK or the London
attacks; ‘unconventional’ in this case meaning not in accordance with traditional US
diplomacy. Herein lies the novelty: while breaking up with media intermediaries and
deinstitutionalising public diplomacy, Trump is sending a direct message, not promoting
diplomatic negotiations. One-way and directly confrontational messages are not the way
to promote dialogue, a key issue in public diplomacy.

The President’s behaviour does not add value to US public diplomacy in the social
media. His hyper-leadership attitude is accelerated by the instantaneousness of Twitter,
it erodes social capital and reduces both trust and intercultural communication. He
overshadows all other foreign policy actors by diminishing the weight of intelligence
from the diplomatic community.

In summary, Donald Trump’s social media use is frivolous, overturning traditional wisdom
and judgment in his presidential statements. He jumps from crisis to crisis, using a
colloquial style in delivering messages instead of providing solid content. He is breaking
the rules and that is only good for the political communication community.
[JB emphasis & comment: what is meant by this statement?]