Abstract
The 2016 election of Donald Trump represented a challenge for US democracy and, at the same time, offered media scholars a lot of surprising material for reflection. Indeed Trump's election was something unexpected that dramatically changed established routines and expectations in the field of communication, election campaign and journalism. Still today there are new studies trying to interpret which sort of novelties that election brought and which are the possible legacies that we will face in the future.
Among others, two books have been published that go beyond the immediacy of the surprise placing that election in broader theoretical frameworks.
From Media Logic to Gonzo Governance
A long time ago – back in 1979 – the book Media Logic by Robert Snow and David Altheide was published and in 2023 David Altheide, following the surprising victory of Trump, published a sort of updated version of the ideas that were presented in Media Logic.
The title of his new book – Gonzo Governance – may sound strange but it reflects very well the ideas contained in it. The expression ‘Gonzo’ was originally used by the journalist Hunter Thompson to indicate, as Altheide underlines, ‘that individual actors use mass and social media to rail against a fearful disorder that needs drastic corrections’ (p. 7). Thompson did this when in the ‘70s he introduced a new format of journalistic discourse mixing together different styles. This style was called ‘Gonzo’, thus also reflecting his style of life – moving through different and contrasting experiences. Altheide states that this was the attitude that in 2016 Trump used to campaign and, which more generally was confirmed all along in his communication and political activity.
Following his already quoted interpretative approach that sees the reality as built by the media, and today mainly by social media, Altheide offers many examples of how Trump performed a campaign that was marked by three main features: technology, entertainment and fear.
Trump was, and in some way still is, the man of Twitter that he used to overcome the mediation by journalists and to talk directly to voters. For Altheide, like for many other observers, rather than ‘a television person’ (of which, nevertheless, he was a super-consumer) Trump was, and still is, a ‘social media person’.
The former US President effectively transferred the amusement logic of television into social media: his tweets and posts were crowded with expressions and formats that were already familiar to the audience and that were essentially deriving from the well-established television discourse.
And finally, fear. As the philosopher Martha Nussbaum has already suggested, ours is the age of fear representing the main engine of political discourse of these times. The principal aim of Trump's communication was to spread fear of immigrants, potential socialists, Muslims and other minority movements. These groups were conceived of as potential bearers of threats against white Americans.
Altheide's book does not contain empirical analysis but it is full of episodes, namely candidate statements that are discussed to stress how the Gonzo strategy of Trump confirmed the strength of media logic to shape social reality successfully, mixing together new technology, entertainment and fear.
With his communication approach, Trump successfully introduced dramatic novelties into established campaigning routines that were coming from past, outdated times. Trump's novelties confirmed how, still in the era of digital communication, social reality is profoundly shaped by the media and nowadays particularly by social media.
Trump and the epistemological foundations of news reporting
With their book News after Trump, Matt Carlson, Sue Robinson and Seth Lewis have an even more extreme aim. Their volume too starts with the acknowledgement that the election of Trump represented a dramatic shift in the world of communication and particularly in the journalistic world. Indeed, for these authors, Trump's election is questioning the ‘relevance’ itself of today's journalism as a public institution.
Their entire volume focuses on a main thesis: the Trump experience is showing how journalism is losing its place as an institutional form of knowledge. In other words, Trump's campaign and communication strategy are challenging and delegitimizing the relevance of journalism as a source of recognized knowledge.
The book underlines three major factors shaping Trump's communication: new media, polarization and populism. As we know, and as Altheide himself stresses, Trump has been, and still is a major producer of tweets, and other digital messages, through which he was able to monopolize the entire 2016 campaign and the following years as President of USA. Under his Presidency, and earlier all through his election campaign, he polarized the political spectrum delegitimizing his competitors. And finally, he has been a promoter of a populist approach to social problems that he has dramatically contributed to diffuse in other parts of the world.
Through these three ‘devices’, Trump got his victory against the legacy of a relevant journalism. For the three authors, this is a long-lasting victory that they summarize in this way: Trump's focus on vilifying journalists is not about trying to spin news frames. It goes deeper to strike at the epistemological foundations of news reporting. This resulted in a blanket rejection of news narratives through the frequency of attacks, the severity of the charges he made against reporters, and the ambiguity of who these enemies were (p. 103).
The two books are similar in many respects: Both books contain harsh criticism of Donald Trump and his communication approach. Both underline that the innovations that his figure implies will have long life; they are not temporary. The two books also have one important thing in common: even if they offer a large number of real stories and anecdotes about Trump, their overall approach is mainly theoretical and they insert Trump's political adventure into a large interpretative framework going back to well-established sociological and media studies foundations.