Communication Evolution - PDF

Running head: COMMUNICATION EVOLUTION
COMMUNICATION EVOLUTION
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Abstract
The 2016 Presidential election in USA has been a controversial and competitive one. The
presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton has been engaged in verbal debates
and a high voltage media campaign to influence voters and sway the votes in their favor. This
paper will endeavor in analyzing the 2016 Presidential elections and exploring the various ways
in which the people have been influenced to vote in a certain pattern. The various mediums that
have been used are also to be understood in context of the American culture.
Literature Review
The elections this time in United States unlike the previous elections, as the candidates
directly represented the status quo of the two parties they belonged form, Democrat and
Republicans. The election was more about the personality and approach of the two candidates,
rather than their party ideology (Lilleker et al. 2016). Donald Trump took a very ingenious
approach in presenting himself as an “outsider” in politics and someone who was a perfect
representative of the American dream. He is an established business personality, and property
honcho, however he had no substantial experience in the field of politics (Williams 2017).
Trump had from the very beginning shaped his personality to the voters as a person who is
strictly right wing and he included a no compromise policy against the immigrants (Norpoth
2016). A lot of political experts dubbed his approach as being pro white and viewing the Asian
and African people as outsiders. This made a lot of people doubt the victory of Trump into office
as a substantial amount of votes come from the Asians and Afro Americans. However, the media
campaign that Trump took was different and unconventional (Davis 2016). Trump focused on
unlikely voters who “rarely” has been participants of the primaries, which elects the Presidential

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nominates, and Trump successfully managed to win the primaries. The low propensity voters’
strategy worked out well (Montanaro 2016).
The data analysts and the campaign designers launched one of the most unusual
campaigns that had been ever been conducted. A data operation to predict the campaign
outcomes had been designed inside the Trump towers known as the “Trump Tech”. There were
contracts set up with “Nation builder” a platform that has been designed digitally to establish
contact with the volunteers, workers and supporters.
There have been various controversies during the political campaign that was taken up by
Donald Trump, one of which was Gender issues. According to Wang et al. (2016) both Hillary
Clinton and Donald Trump used woman card in their political campaign to win the votes of the
women. However, some comments made by Donald Trump helped the media against him to
portray him as anti-women. Apart from that the media took up the case of Russian hand in US
election to establish that Trump has been getting outside support in the elections, and his election
as a President can hamper national security (Lichtblau and Myers 2016). As reported by BBC
“US intelligence agencies have concluded Moscow tried to sway the presidential election in
favor of Mr. Trump. It is alleged that Russian hackers stole information linked to the campaign
of his rival Hillary Clinton and passed it to WikiLeaks so it could be released to undermine her.
Congressional committees were set up to investigate the matter and, in March, then-FBI director
James Comey confirmed the bureau had its own inquiry.” However, the clever election campaign
adopted by the Trump camp was effective enough to remove the obstacles and hurdles posed by
the media and successfully win the elections.
In terms of the media of United States, it was initially seen that most of the big media
houses were against the Trump campaign. Huffington Post, The New York Times and CNN were