Sunday, January 21, 2018

A year's worth of Trump tweets

As the American Tweeter-in-Chief completes a year in power (God, how did we make it this far?), the BBC has painstakingly analyzed the man's main method of communication.
Despite vowing, seven months before his election win, not to continue his Twitter use if he were to be elected President, on the grounds that tweeting is "not presidential", Mr. Trump has in fact sent out 2,608 tweets during the last year, an average of just over 7 a day. 32% of these tweets were sent between 6am and 9am, when his favourite TV show, Fox and Friends, is on the air. Although this is by far the most "productive" time of the day, with another lesser peak around 6-7pm, every hour of the day and night has witnessed a Trump tweet or two at some point. He "peaked" on 28 May, managing 6 tweets in 12 minutes.
About 47% of his tweets were critical and about 20% complimentary (the rest being neither). He once managed to criticize seven different targets in one 140-character tweet. His most regular target has been the media, with 196 referencing fake news, the press, or mainstream media, and 147 mentioning specific media outlets, with CNN taking the brunt of these attacks. Ex-President Obama received 100 tweets; law enforcement, court official and special counsel merited 95; and Hillary Clinton 79. Perhaps surprisingly, though, he has actually praised more individuals, groups and places than he has criticized (214 to 140), many of them being simple, one-off congratulations to visitors to the White House or attendees at meetings. So, although he has fewer targets for his critical tweets, he attacks them far more often. Some individuals, like Steve Bannon and Justin Trudeau, have the distinction of garnering both praise and vitriol in different tweets, as the mood takes him.
In response to a reminder about the "not presidential" characterization of Twitter, he later called it (in a tweet, of course) "modern-day presidential". 
 

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