President Trump averages seven tweets per day to his 41 million followers, but many experts say his use of Twitter often harms his political agenda. (photo: Photos for Class royalty free image)
Ben Hauver
thebuffaloreview@gmail.com
(Buffalo, N.Y.) – President Donald Trump has been both criticized and touted for his willingness to break longstanding political tradition in the U.S.
The president has continued to differentiate himself from those who previously held the office by being active on social media, especially Twitter.
Trump averages seven tweets per day to his 41 million followers, a stark comparison to former President Barack Obama, who averaged less than one.
Despite frequent criticism for his extensive use of Twitter, there are no indications Trump intends to slow down.
In fact, per twittercounter.com, Trump has nearly doubled his average tweets per month since July 2017.
“They undermine his ability to get things done. Often times, the tweets are self-incriminating, in that they end up getting used against him in court,” said Dr. Michael Niman, a professor of communication at SUNY Buffalo State.
For example, the administration has a number of legal challenges to Trump’s proposed transgender military ban and his travel restrictions on eight, mostly Muslim majority countries.
In those cases, the judges cited the president’s previous statements and tweets, which were contrary to what the administration’s lawyers argued and said about the controversial policies in court.
Additionally, political discourse on Twitter has been clouded by the increasing use of “bots,” which are automated accounts managed by artificial intelligence software.
The Twitter bots, which are intended to appear as real people, often post in broken English, reciting information copied from another source to promote a specific agenda and some have said the automated accounts are responsible for spreading fake news stories.
“(Twitter has) degraded discourse to such a banal level that people can’t even tell that they are communicating with robots,” said Niman. “You are creating a false bandwagon effect. It seems like everyone else is doing it, but everyone else are robots. Eventually, people follow the bots.”
“Social media has been weaponized by individuals to take over the democratic process,” said Dr. Peter Yacabucci, a professor of political science at Buffalo State.
“The democratic ideal of each individual having one voice and expressing that voice and creating a government that represents the people, simply doesn’t exist in social media,” he said.
“The whole point of democracy is that individuals express their viewpoints and then the government represents those viewpoints. That can’t happen if we have bots that are taking up half or a significant portion of the viewpoints that are being expressed on social media and that’s what we’re seeing.”
Additionally, there is concern that bots have been deployed by foreign interests to influence American politics, especially during 2016 presidential election, which is currently under investigation by the Senate Judiciary Committee.
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