Abstract
First as a candidate then as president, Donald Trump understood the power of disintermediation that allows him to speak directly to a wide audience, in a process which is crucially amplified by mass media. He talks to the public through his tweets, cutting out the mainstream media. He is by-passing the whole complex of advisers, pollsters, and traditional journalistic filters. He has further understood that mainstream citizens live in filter bubbles in which we each choose our own news and, dangerously, our own facts. In looking at the variation among US presidents in the forums they choose to communicate to the press and to answer reporters’ questions, this chapter argues that Donald Trump is truly the first disintermediating US president. This chapter also sheds light on the ways in which Twitter is affecting the course of modern American politics, 140 characters at a time.
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Morini, M. (2020). Disintermediator-in-Chief. In: Lessons from Trump’s Political Communication. Political Campaigning and Communication. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39010-5_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39010-5_1
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