Telling the Story of the Superhero and the Anti-Politician as President: Donald Trump’s Branding on Twitter
| Published date | 01 August 2019 |
| Date | 01 August 2019 |
| Author | Andrea Schneiker |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929918807712 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929918807712
Political Studies Review
2019, Vol. 17(3) 210 –223
© The Author(s) 2018
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929918807712
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Telling the Story of the
Superhero and the
Anti-Politician as President:
Donald Trump’s Branding
on Twitter
Andrea Schneiker
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
Accepted: 27 September 2018
Introduction
Twitter and other social media have an impact on political processes, such as elections
(see, for example, Cogburn and Espinoza-Vasquez, 2011; Cornfield, 2017; Williams,
2017). Although Donald Trump is not the first head of state to use Twitter extensively, the
tweets of this 45th President of the United States are highly political and relevant for both
domestic politics and foreign policy. In some cases, it is not press releases, conferences or
State of the Union addresses but rather the President’s tweets that are the most important
Social Sciences, University of Siegen, Siegen, Germany
Corresponding author:
Andrea Schneiker, Social Sciences, University of Siegen, Adolf-Reichwein-Str. 2, 57068 Siegen, Germany.
Email: schneiker@sozialwissenschaften.uni-siegen.de
807712PSW0010.1177/1478929918807712Political Studies ReviewSchneiker
research-article2018
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