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Ryan Henry
Language and Communication Theory
Donald Trump’s Campaign: How the Media Has Shaped His Campaign
April 18, 2016
University of Texas at San Antonio

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As the year progress’s we continue to see what the presidential candidates are saying
throughout their campaigns. We have seen Bernie fight for the college students saying that
college and our education should be free, and that wall street should add taxes to help us students
pay for the debt we get into in the years we are in college. We have seen Hilary express her
views on abortion, free trade and environmental issues; but the big issue we see and hear is the
whole Donald Trump campaign. Throughout his entire campaign we have seen the media
highlight his actions more than others because of his words of racism, mocking of a news
reporter, accusing Mexico of sending rapists in the United States, and many more obscene things
in almost every rally he has had in the United States (Milbank 2015). Donald Trump has been
considered a bigot and a racist far too many times since he has started his presidential campaign.
We have seen more violence at presidential rallies than any of the other nominees, and even in
the past years. Trump has led the violent protests by egging on his middle aged non-educational
white supporters in his rallies, by praising people when someone is kicked out and when
someone does not fit his criteria of a true American. The thing is though this is all being
highlighted within the media and all over social media. Though most of his media attention that
he is getting is negative, it is all still attention in which more and more people see. Media
ecology theory states that media can affect how viewers portray people on things like television.
With the Kennedy and Nixon debate we saw that Kennedy was able to use television to portray
that he was not as nervous and sweaty as Nixon. This was because Nixon was not using makeup
and did not look like he was as comfortable as Kennedy was.
From the power point slides about the media ecology theory it is said that “we shape our
tools, and they in turn shape us” meaning that with the tools we have can shape how people view
the ideas that we see on television. This is a very important theory especially in today’s society.

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Technology is so widely used that with everything that is going on we can read it or see it at a
touch of a button. With everything that Trump is doing we see videos and articles that publishers
are putting out. CNN, NBC, ABC, and Fox are all big publishers especially when following the
presidential candidates progress throughout the year. Media has been targeting Trump since his
verbal attacks on Muslims stating that Muslims should be banned entering the United States
(Byers 2015.) With cool media being the most common way we see Trump in action it is
important to know when he is telling the truth and when he is fibbing. Trump turned to social
media to try and report that eighty-one percent of white homicides reported were responsible by
blacks, but the FBI put stats from 2014 that those numbers, were in fact less than 15 percent
(Byers 2015.) Even though most of the things that we have been seeing on television is negative,
we are seeing Trump on tv way more than the other candidates. He has been making a name for
himself and people want to see what kind of crazy things he has said today. Media is fueling his
campaign wether we like it or not, his coverage is so widespread that other candidates are
frustrated because they are not getting the same amount of television coverage that he is. Some
reports are saying that Trump has no chance in making any kind of stand against the other
nominees but “White America” sees what Trump wants with everything and has pushed him
higher in the poll ratings. He has taken wins in the states of Florida, Illinois, and North Carolina
pushing Senator Marco Rubio out of the race (Martin 2016.) With these wins he is a lot closer to
becoming the Republican candidate and his followers are growing by the minute. In March riots
were almost started in Illinois after protesters got violent in a Trump rally. The media covered it
widely and it was all over the news when he had to cancel his rally. Trump very well knows that
the media is covering him way more than others, when asked about advocate groups attacking
him he was baffled because he stated that “his numbers went up” (Martin 2016.)

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As stated earlier we saw that television played a big role in candidates debates with
Kennedy and Nixon. This was a big thing during that time frame. Most of the way people got
their information was through the radio and TV, whereas now we can get i tat the push of a
button from our smart phones. There are apps specifically on our iPhones that bring us all the
news and all the newest information. With the new Apple Watch you can get all this information
right to your wrist without even pulling out our phones or pulling out the newspaper. We are in
the electronic age of society where technology is taking off. Trump very well knows this and
uses it to his advantage. All of the front runner candidates have made social media accounts like
Twitter and Instagram so their followers can actually follow recent news in the candidacy race.
But even though there are millions of followers it does not meant that people are going to vote
for them. It is in the right path as to getting peoples attention, Trump and Clinton are the leading
front runners of followers. With Trump at 47 million followers on Twitter and Clinton with 46
million, we see that there are a lot of people using these platforms to track what the candidates
are doing. With the creation of hashtags people can make one and get something trending on a
social media to get attention globally. Bernie Sanders had the hashtag “Feel The Bern” created
by his followers and it was talked about over four hundred thousand times in a matter of thirty
days (Whitten 2015.) Though Trump has not mad any hashtags he used Twitter to post pictures
of a swastika next to presidential candidate Jeb Bush. It may not be something that is positive it
is a hot media that is used every day and every hour. Millions of people saw this and either
supported his tweet or ridiculed it. As stated by Brigitte Majewski “Social [media] has a degree
of risk that other communication channels do not. Social s a fickle master. We have seen masses
turn, like they did on Jeb, and it is not controllable” (Whitten 2015.) Majewski was refereeing to
Jeb Bush’s twitter post with his new slogan “ Jeb Can Fix It.” Twitter attacked him saying that

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when he was trying to make a positive message out of it. The thing about social media is that
once one person gets on the train of making fun of it, it is on there for the whole world to see and
people can just keep adding to it. Trump even got in on the fun and tweeted “Jeb’s new slogan …
I never thought of Jeb as a crook! Stupid message, the word ‘fix’ is not a good one to use in
politics!” (Whitten 2015.)
With the likes of social media and news coverage we have seen the rise of candidates
getting coverage on CNN and FOX news. Donald Trump gets about forty-six percent of news
coverage since the beginning of his candidacy (Bacon 2015.) The public is so interested in
Trumps coverage because of his obscene acts with what he says on TV and what he says in his
social media accounts that thy just want more and more. The thing with media though is that
even though we are wanting to see what the potential future presidents have to say about what
they will do in office we do not see them airing them as much as we do with Trump and his
outlandish comments on things.
As the presidential race continues we are going to see more and more coverage on Trump
to see what he is willing to do for this country. It is doubtful that he will change his ways and his
comments, whereas he sees them as making “America Great Again.” The way media is now days
it is only going to keep growing because of what is usually trending or whats hot in todays
society. We see that media ecology is always going to shape the way we are presented with
things, and it is never going to really change. Technology and news is something that is going to
keep moving forward, delivering us with news. There will always be new ways that these things
will be presented to us, we are not going backwards with technology but forward. As for Trump
and his political campaign, he is going to continue to get the stardom he is looking for because
he wants to win the president job. Media and social media will not stop putting him in the

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spotlight because racism is a growing factor in our society. As long as he is promoting that
Mexicans are rapists, African Americans are the cause for all of our crimes, and Muslims are not
allowed in this country; Trump will continue his reign to win at all costs with media following
his every move.

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References
Bacon, P., Jr. (2015, July 22). How the Media Is Fueling Donald Trump's Campaign.
Retrieved April 17, 2016, from http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/how-
media-fueling-donald-trumps-campaign-n395821
Byers, D. (2015, December 10). The media unload on Donald Trump. Retrieved April
16, 2016, from http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/10/politics/donald-trump-media-backlash/
Martin, J., & Burns, A. (2016, March 15). Donald Trump Takes 3 States; John Kasich
Wins Ohio. Retrieved April 18, 2016, from
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/us/politics/republican-primary-results.html
Milbank, D. (2015, December 01). Donald Trump is a bigot and a racist. Retrieved April
16, 2016, from https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-is-a-bigot-and-
a-racist/2015/12/01/a2a47b96-9872-11e5-8917-653b65c809eb_story.html
Whitten, S. (2015, November 05). Can 140 characters affect the 2016 presidential
election? Retrieved April 17, 2016, from http://www.cnbc.com/2015/11/05/can-140-
characters-affect-the-2016-presidential-election.html