COLLEGE PARK, Maryland — In early July, President Donald Trump used one of the thousands of tweets he’s sent since his election to the presidency to explain his social media behavior.
My use of social media is not Presidential – it’s MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL. Make America Great Again!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 1, 2017
So what exactly does it mean to be “modern day presidential,” according to the president’s own @realDonaldTrump Twitter account? The CNS Social team used the Trump Twitter Archive to search for common terms from the more than 2,600 tweets Trump has sent since being elected on Nov. 8, 2016.
Here’s what we did to calculate tallies for each of the terms presented in the graphs below:
- Terms were searched in the archive exactly as they appear in the graph (i.e. “EricTrump” not “Eric Trump”) in order to maximize the number of term results, though it’s possible his tweets included certain letter sequences, such as “eric,” in other, different words, such as “America.”
- For the purposes of the tally, all of Trump’s tweets were searched, including both his tweets and retweets.
- Tallies include the number of terms used, not the number of tweets (i.e. if the word “Obama” was used twice in one tweet, the term was counted twice).
- CNS selected four of the most topically relevant terms for each category. The terms selected do not represent all terms in each category.
- Tweets from Nov. 8, 2016 – Nov. 30, 2017 were analyzed.
CNS started by searching for various journalistic organizations including television news networks and newspapers. We also gathered data on the president’s use of the word “fake,” which he used a majority of the time in the phrase “fake news.”
One network, in particular, seemed to be on the president’s mind more than others.
Next, CNS examined terms related to different political topics. Even after the 2016 presidential election concluded, the president’s use of the word “election” remained prevalent in his tweets.
After that, CNS looked through the president’s tweets about other countries. As with the media category, one term — “Russia” — was used much more frequently than the others.
When it comes to other politicians, the president’s tweets reflect he might be more caught up in the past than focused on the present.
The last category CNS looked through was the president’s family. On Twitter, Trump talks more about his wife and daughter Ivanka than about two of his sons, Eric and Donald Jr. Additionally, the president has mentioned his youngest son, Barron, by name twice but has not tweeted about his other daughter, Tiffany, during this same time period.
The final step was comparing the categories outlined above. CNS added up the totals for the terms in each categorical graph to get a sum for all five categories. According to the terms we searched, the president has tweeted more about the media than about fellow politicians since his election.
Based on our analysis of Trump’s personal Twitter account, the president’s idea of “modern day presidential” behavior on Twitter includes chatter about journalistic organizations, former politicians, past events and certain eastern countries.