Twitter Post-Trump

This week marks the end of one of the most roller-coaster administrations in US political history. Trump has made such a unique mark on the White House that it almost seems strange to think of the building and its most powerful occupant reverting to more traditional methods of governing.

The focus on President Biden will mean that the bandwidth of attention that Trump currently commands with inevitably decline. However, prior to Biden’s inauguration and following the incredible events with the storming of the US Capitol, Trump was already shorn of one of his most effective mouthpieces when he had his Twitter account suspended indefinitely.

Suddenly at the flick of a switch from a Social Media megacorporation, the 45th President of the United States of America was unable to communicate directly with almost 90 million people. Trump’s use of the platform in his journey from gameshow host to Republican candidate to the most powerful man on the planet with surely be studied forensically in the years to come, but for now the focus is on the rights and wrongs of the decision to remove him from it.

Trump averaged around 276 tweets per month. The most active 10% of users on Twitter, which account for 80% of the total content, had a median of 138 tweets per month. Using this megaphone, often from the sanctity of his private residence or even whilst on the golf course, Trump was able not only to shape international events but crucially able to shape the understood nature of reality itself for many of his followers.

When he took over the Presidency, he had 20 million followers, today questions are circulating as to whether he will create his own social media channel, or try and join lesser-known existing networks and turn them into his own fiefdom. In the process of being impeached for the second time, Trump’s opponents cited his direct command and control of the narrative leading up to the storming of the Capitol.

The beauty of Twitter is that it gives us data and trends that allow an insight into the President’s behaviour in a way that we never had for any of his predecessors. Such an authentic method of communication likely bonded Trump to many of his supporters in ways that traditional media struggles to do. Following defeat in the election in November Trump took his use of Twitter to an entirely new domain, it was almost as if he had cancelled much of the normal business and running of the country to focus on running a campaign from his smartphone to overturn the results.

In December 2019, he tweeted more than 600 times — an average of 58 times a day. For years Trump’s critics have been pushing for Twitter to take a tougher stance on his messages. Many could be argued to incite violence or be otherwise incendiary. In turns of factual untruths, the numbers are in the thousands. Yet it took the institutions of US democracy themselves to be breached and for people to be killed directly after a Trump rally for Twitter to take the steps they did, surely with half an eye on the countdown clock to him being out of office.

It was a decision they could not have taken lightly. The share price of Twitter fell by some 7% directly after the Trump ban and politicians and commentators from across the political spectrum ramped up talk of new regulations to come in future on potentially muzzling the power of social media companies.

A Rubicon does fell like it has been crossed. If social media companies feel they have both the mandate and power to censor or flag the opinions and words of democratically elected leaders, is that not a recognition of the immense power they have in free societies? And therefore, how are they truly being held to account?

Regardless of your politics, the period of the Trump Presidency has shown that the power and influence of social media companies across all parts of US politics and society at large is beyond any conceptions had when they were launched. A wider debate is needed as to how the internet and its tools are proactively and passively dividing communities into echo chambers and sites were manipulation and untruths are rife. Trump was able to use Twitter for so long in such a way simply because he could and perhaps nobody imagine a US President would, in the future new norms and rules are needed to harness such incredible influence.