Telling the Story of the Superhero and the Anti-Politician as President: Donald Trump’s Branding on Twitter

Abstract

Given his extensive use of Twitter, the ways in which Donald Trump uses this platform are subject to a number of scholarly analyses. These generally attribute the success of Trump’s tweets to the ways in which he uses the features Twitter offers. Adopting a perspective of political marketing, I regard Donald Trump as a political product that is marketed through political branding. Drawing on the literature on celebrity politicians and based on a sample of 1469 tweets that were posted by Donald Trump’s personal Twitter account @realDonaldTrump between March 2016 and April 2017, I argue that Donald Trump’s image marketing strategy produces a new brand that distinguishes Donald Trump from his competitors and predecessors: the superhero anti-politician celebrity. The analysis furthermore shows that in contrast to the assumption formulated in the literature on celebrity politicians, this brand does not contribute to reinvigorating democracy, because it is based on contempt of the existing political system.

Keywords

Twitter political branding Donald Trump celebrity politicians

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