Can Donald Trump's social media genius take him all the way to the White House?

In sentences I never thought I’d write: Donald Trump is still riding high in the polls as part of his bid to be the next President of the United States. Late last month, the Republican nomination hopeful dropped a massive 12 percentage points in a single week following comments on creating a Muslim Database, but it speaks to his unfathomable popularity that even with such a vertiginous fall he was still hitting 31%, and since then, his ratings have climbed ever higher.

If there’s anything that goes some way to explaining Trump’s popularity in the midst of his quasi-fascistic views that reached a nadir with his call to ban all Muslims from entering the United States, it is his social media prowess. Trump has more than 5.5 million Twitter followers and 4.5 million Facebook fans. He has a presence across YouTube, Vine, Instagram and Periscope. Dan Pfeiffer, Obama’s highly-regarded former digital and social media guru, has said Trump is “way better at the internet than anyone else in the GOP which is partly why he is winning.”

Unusually for such a modest man, Trump has also, er, trumpeted his own social media savvy, saying that he “understands it maybe better than anybody, ever”. He has also called himself: “the Ernest Hemingway of 140 characters”.

What’s behind Trump’s social media strategy? Is it carefully calibrated or is it authentic? Does he always get it right, and do mainstream media outlets need to be worried? How are those against Trump fighting back online – in particular after his most incendiary comments? And perhaps, most important of all: what does this mean for his candidacy?

Let’s take a look at the ins and outs of Internet Trump.

His Instagram videos are ‘the future of American politics’

Trump is fond of posting short clips to Instagram, as well as Vine, Twitter and Facebook. The brief videos evolved from his presence on YouTube (the Trump channel now has upwards of 1.3m views). Most of the clips consist of him yelling into a camera, flecks of spittle hitting the lens.

Trump’s 15-second Instagram shorts are the brainchild of his 29-year-old director of new media, Justin McConney. Costing nothing to produce, lo-fi, short and to the point, the spots are often picked up and run across mainstream TV networks. Essentially, Trump is gaining free TV advertising when it is estimated that 2016 presidential candidates will spend, together, $4.4bn (£2.9bn) on television campaigns. Trump has spent just 1% of the money Jeb Bush has on TV adverts. That’s an extraordinary figure, especially for a man of Trump’s wealth.

As well as the quick desk-based rants, Trump’s team also cut quick, slick videos, often featuring doom-laden music, out-of-context soundbites and black-and-white filters (a similar aesthetic to truthers). Again, the reach outweighs the shoddy production values. The video posted in Novermber of Hilary Clinton laughing over a wreckage in Bengazi is a good example.

Trump has now extended his video output, announcing that he will be holding weekly live-streams on Periscope. He’s not the first politician to use Periscope, but he is the first to announce a regular Q&A session.

Trump’s shorts aren’t always so slick, however, as the video of him being attacked by an American bald eagle attests.

The tradition of politicians adopting zeitgeist media

Goebbels had his Leni Riefenstahl films to (agit)prop up Hitler in the 1930s. Some of the most famous political speeches of all time came from Churchill, crackling over the radio during wartime, (or more specifically, from a voice actor), galvanising a nation. In the US, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “fireside chats” are the stuff of legend. John F. Kennedy, meanwhile, is known as the first TV president.

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Donald Trump, in many ways, is carrying the baton from Barack Obama’s successful 2008 election campaign, which some called the Facebook election. That campaign saw Obama implement a digital team including 24-year-old Facebook co-founder, Chris Hughes. Obama has since made many digital appointments, including Pfeiffer (who has since left), Matthew McGregor (who later worked for Labour in the UK) and former Twitter executive Jason Goldman as his chief digital officer.

For his part, Trump apparently sends the majority of his own tweets, especially in the evening, when his staff have gone home. “The two most important things for a celebrity on social media are to be authentic and to give your fans what they want”, says McConney, who does most of the video editing.

He’s a skilled live-tweeter

Trump’s Twitter coverage of major events has become a key part of his online presence. He first offered live reaction during the 2012 GOP debate (another idea of McConney’s). He has also live-tweeted the Oscars and Celebrity Apprentice, as well as the Democratic debate earlier this year – which prompted an excellent response from Hillary Clinton:

Most recently, he live-tweeted the latest Democratic debate which took place over the weekend, taunting Clinton for arriving late to the stage after she was caught in a queue for the bathroom during a commercial break. “It always helps to be talking about what’s trending at the moment,” says McConney. “I think it’s great for his fans to be able to watch these events and see his thoughts on them simultaneously.”

Live-tweeting an event is a fine art – especially when it’s a crowded field. Tweet an observation or joke that hundreds of others have already made and followers will be sure to let you know about it. But live-tweeting a popular event is an opportunity to engage with a wide audience in real time and Trump knows that.

#AskTrump

There were many online media round-ups of the most mocking, often scathing, responses to Trump’s #AskTrump question and answer session in September, with most outlets declaring that the exercise “backfired”. It may well have done, but the Q&A trended worldwide and the mogul answered many questions posed by challengers as well as supporters. He answered via his favoured method – the short video clip – rather than simple text.

Once again, he effortlessly dominated the conversation online which translated into mainstream media coverage. Some of the piss-taking tweets, were, however, hilarious.

He’s easily meme-able (and gullible)

Trump loves to talk about how high his IQ is – and how low everybody else’s is. This despite the fact that nobody with any actual smarts believes an IQ score to be indicative of actual real world intelligence. In truth, Trump is often caught out by basic Twitter pranks. A particular trick he falls for, seemingly again and again, is retweeting photographs of well-known people when Twitter users dupe him into believing they are Trump supporters as opposed to, say, infamous murderers Fred and Rose West. He threatened to sue over that particular incident.

Trump also mistook a picture of the British leader of the opposition Jeremy Corbyn for a tweeter’s first-time voter father. As well as not being able to identify Corbyn, he retweeted a picture of former Scottish Labour party leader, Jim Murphy. (But to be honest: us neither).

Trump’s incredible foot-in-mouth skills also mean the man is made for internet mockery. For instance, this gem from before his presidential bid, part of the fallout from this Jon Stewart skit that came in response to Trump’s trolling of the presenter:

Trump doesn’t care for mainstream media, and he might not need it

A question asked by the political commentariat is this: is Trump’s dominance of social media unnerving the fourth estate and traditional broadcast media? And that answer appears to be, to some extent: yes.

This question has come up before in various political races – particularly in the campaign for the Labour Party leadership in the UK, when supporters of Jeremy Corbyn – who is frequently savaged by the right of the British mainstream media – mobilised online. Corbyn won the vote by a landslide.

But contrast this with many commentators and pollsters blindsided by the majority Conservative 2015 election win. Demographics are skewed when it comes to online v phone polling; much of politics on social media is an echo chamber thanks to algorithms partly based on who we follow and our location settings. Photoshopping a #milifandom picture of Ed Miliband doesn’t mean you support him, and engaging behind a screen requires less effort than getting to a voting booth.

As well as spending a pittance on traditional TV advertising, Trump is also wont to turn down media appearances because he can just click a button and get his views out there. This, in particular, speaks to the issue of whether social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are becoming publishers with editorial codes. (What would happen, say, if Trump crossed a line and tweeted something that could be regarded as hate speech? Many would argue he already has)

Cue plenty of think pieces, like this one and this one, on what this all means for broadcast and print. Trump, meanwhile, doesn’t care and seems keen on disparaging most journalists and outlets – both left and right-leaning.

Zac Moffat, responsible for Mitt Romney’s digital campaigning in 2012, said: “[Trump has] used social media to replace the traditional apparatus of a political campaign. He’s living on this medium.” Asked about his talent for social media, Trump said “it’s great. It’s like owning a newspaper but without the losses”. Burn.

It is worth mentioning that there are signs the media is fighting back. After Trump’s heinous comments on Muslims, the Huffington Post moved all of its Trump related content from its entertainment section, with Arianna Huffington writing that she no longer viewed Trump’s candidacy as amusing. Buzzfeed’s editor-in-chief Ben Smith also tweeted a memo he wrote to his staff, in which he said it was fine for them to call Trump “a mendacious racist”.

He doesn’t seem to care about the facts, either

Trump tells a lot of lies. A lot of lies. Often, dangerous and divisive lies more suited to the type of conspiracy theorists who stay up editing 9/11 videos until four in the morning. But, again, he doesn’t care.

Challenged on retweeting untrue statistics on race and crime, he responded: “All it was was a retweet”. Though he’s deleted tweets in the past (including the Fred and Rose West one), he more often leaves tweets up. Or blames it on an intern. It is hard for the media to hold a politician to account when he doesn’t try to cover up his lies or blatant disregard for the facts. Trump’s main medium is the internet – and the internet is a place where lies quite comfortably live.

But he does care for the fans

Trump often tweets quite personal things about his family. He also frequently thanks his supporters, which is unusual for a figure with so many followers. As well as this, he engages with gossip and celebrity and popular culture. The New York Times warns of the risk of appearing frivolous, but it helps to make billionaire Trump seem more in-touch than other fusty politicians. This fits in of course with his entire stance, which is that of the anti-politician. He still claims to speak for the “silent majority” (or, as self-described in this excellent GQ piece, “the quiet people”) and paints himself as an everyman (an everyman with who lives in a $100m penthouse, sure).

Are all his online fans real?

As touched on above, social media activity and popularity does not necessarily translate to the polls or electoral success. There are many reasons for this – namely, it is much easier to click a “like” button than make the effort to go to the voting booth. Also to consider: those engaged online tend to be younger and don’t vote in big numbers IRL. Further – just because a person follows a social media account, it doesn’t mean they agree with or support it.

Then there’s the knock-on effect of virtue signalling. Many people will tweet charity campaigns for refugees or support for left wing politicians because they think it makes them look good. It’s possible that people who support immigration controls or policies that belie their self-interest keep it under wraps (see also: the shy Tory phenomenon).

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But there is another side, which is the existence of bot or spam followers and supporters and likes. One study found that of Trump’s millions of Facebook followers, only 42% were from America. Many followers were from developing countries, in particular countries in Asia. 1 in 27 of Trump’s followers was based in Malaysia.

What does this mean? It means that much of Trump’s online support is coming from places notorious for online and social media fraud. It is common for individuals to be paid by brands and companies to “like” their products and events to give the impression of popularity. And so-called “like farms” and comment armies are often used by undemocratic parties in certain parts of the world (Russia, for example).

I used TwitterAudit to give an estimate of the real-to-fake ratio of Trump’s Twitter followers and 64% were thought to be real – but that means more than 1.6 million are thought to be fake. I am not suggesting that Trump’s campaign team is buying fake support itself – I don’t think it is – but it’s interesting that a lot of his support seems to come from places of particularly spammy regions.

Trump doesn’t actually seem to understand the internet

He might be good on Twitter, but Trump hasn’t covered himself in glory when it comes to understanding the rudimentary elements of the internet. He was widely mocked after proclaiming in the most recent GOP debate that “areas of the internet should be closed off”.

Not only does this posit a dangerous oppression on censorship and freedom of information more typical of despotic dictatorships such as North Korea, or China’s “great firewall”, but it’s also something which can’t be simply implemented, which Trump doesn’t quite seem to understand. It’s as though he thinks he can just hop from house to house in Raqqa unplugging ethernet cables and the whole Isis death cult thing will be sorted. He is also quite keen on referring to the internet as “our internet”. The US doesn’t own the internet, Donald.

How is the internet fighting back?

The internet, as anybody with a connection will know, gives as good as it gets. Trump may have saturated social media, but there are plenty of people pushing back on his 140-character vitriol, 15 seconds of posturing or his Nuremberg-in-a-wig broadcasts. The mocking of Trump is not just limited to specific social media events such as the #AskTrump question and answer session. Pretty much everything Trump tweets or posts will have comments and replies calling him out as racist, xenophobic, sexist, misogynist.

Memes mocking Trump abound – his alleged toupé and radioactive tan are often targeted – but his policies are also taken to task in succinct style. There has also been plenty of online support for Muslims, and defence of Islam, in the wake of Trump’s comments. In particular, after Trump ridiculously asserted that there were “no-go areas” in London that police feared to visit, ostensible hotbeds of terrorism, #TrumpFacts began trending on Twitter, calling out Trump’s seeming allergy to rational truth.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg even wrote in a post that he would “fight to create a safe and peaceful environment” for Muslims. While he did not explicitly name Trump, the post appeared after Trump’s comments about wanting to ban Muslims.

An online petition calling for a ban on Trump entering the UK clocked up more than 360,000 signatures in just 24 hours. Apps exist that will remove all mention of Trump online (including the well-named Trump Trump) and a Chrome extension transforms his name into the poo emoji 💩 . The hacking collective Anonymous also announced a fightback against Trump.

What now?

It remains to be seen whether a man so hateful, so farcical, a man whose permanent expression is that of someone whose drunk friends superglued his eyebrows into a frown while he was sleeping, can become president of the United States.

Despite his strong polling numbers, it is probably unlikely. But Trump, thanks to the fact he can rack up 3.6 m Facebook engagements just by announcing his candidacy, has taught us that in 2015 it’s not enough for politicians to be able to adeptly read an Autocue. They’d better be able to take a decent selfie and understand a meme, too.