The 2016 US Presidential Election Campaign - Changing Ways of Campaigning

This essay discusses the changing ways of election campaigning, focusing on the 2016 US presidential election. It explores the use of social media, the role of traditional media, and the unconventional campaign strategies employed by the candidates.

Running head: THE 2016 US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN – CHANGING WAYS OF CAMPAIGNING
THE 2016 US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN – CHANGING WAYS OF
CAMPAIGNING
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THE 2016 US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN – CHANGING WAYS OF CAMPAIGNING
Introduction
Election campaigns or campaigns in general have witness marked shift from the
campaigns that used to be held some decades ago. A comparison of 2007 and 2010 itself shows
the difference in the style of campaigning especially in terms of political campaigning. The
political campaigns in 2007 in Australia saw the absence of coalition entirely from the digital
space. The labor party undertook a strong campaign but with added emphasis on the word
“change” but did not use the social media as much as it used the traditional media. The minor
parties were the ones that made use of the social media and digital platforms. However, the same
platform was jammed in 2010 with political parties not having any space where they did not have
any competition. Twitter became one of the largest online platforms where the campaigning was
done.
This essay will discuss the 2016 US presidential election and highlight the changing ways
in which campaigning has changed over the decades. The essay will refer to other campaigning
as well to elaborate the topic broadly.
Discussion
In 2016, the election campaigning for the presidential post of the world’s most powerful
country was at peak. The official launch of Donald Trump’s campaign was on June 16, 2015 at
his residence, that is, Trump Tower in New York City (Gambino & Pankhania, 2019). Hillary
Clinton’s election campaign started two months before Trump’s campaign on 12 April 2015
(Gambino & Pankhania, 2019). Both the candidates gave full force to their campaigns by
attending town hall meetings, addressing public gatherings, engaging in debates. However, the
most important tool that the two candidates used was the social media. The campaign was even

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designated as the “social media campaign” by some scholars. The campaign was covered
extensively in both traditional media and social media across the globe (Gambino & Pankhania,
2019). People throughout the world were made aware of every word that the candidates were
saying. Over the years, the emergence and dominance of new technologies and the social media
has caused ripples across all occupations. In the field of politics and society in particular, the
social media was the most dominant. Political leaders realized the importance of the social media
as a powerful tool to influence the voters. Election campaigns have increasingly become
dependent on the social media. Social movements too found a powerful platform in the form of
social media.
The focus of this paper is mainly on the political campaigns. Political campaigns take
numerous forms from advertising to online promotions, from meetings to road shows, and so on.
The 2016 US presidential election campaign made use of all forms of political campaigns. The
election is considered “historic” mostly because of the outcomes and the campaigns that led to it.
Donald Trump, the Republican candidate won the elections with unconventional campaigning
that many thought would not work. The coverage of the campaign was mostly one-sided with
majority of news channels rejecting any chances of Trump winning the nominations even, let
alone the elections. In a report by the Shorenstein Center on Media of Harvard Kennedy School
found that, the media coverage for the 2016 general elections was largely negative for both the
candidates (Shorensteincenter.org, 2019. The study revealed that the topics that talked about the
competency and fitness of the two candidates for the presidential was negatively covered in the
media (Shorensteincenter.org, 2019. Controversies and allegations on both the candidates were
the main topic of debate in most of the media platforms. Although negative coverage sometimes
does a good thing for the candidates, too much negativity often produces a corrosive effect. The

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negativity erodes the trust of the voters from their candidates (Fortune.com, 2019). The Fortune
magazine also used the research by the Harvard Kennedy School on the news coverage of the
mainstream media to state that it was the media that helped create Donald Trump. As per the
study, major media outlets that included Fox News, CBS, and NBC, USA Today, the Los Angeles
Times and the New York Times did the coverage of Donald Trump’s campaign “in a way that
was unusual given his initial polling numbers” (Fortune.com, 2019). It was also found that the
majority of media coverage on Trump’s campaigning was positive in tone. The similar was the
case with the social media coverage of Donald Trump and his election campaign. According to
the Shorenstein report, Trump’s personality and his eagerness to provide the media with sound-
bites, in many cases on Twitter and other social media, fed into this pattern”
(Shorensteincenter.org, 2019). The journalists constantly sought him because of his unusual way
of delivering speech and providing sensational sound bites. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand,
received mostly a bad press that good press. In fact, the media negatively covered the entire
Democrat campaign. Mrs. Clinton’s bad media coverage remarkably led to her downfall first in
the poll ratings in 2015 and then in the elections.
The Republican campaign was far less expensive than the Democrat campaign and yet
the Republicans completely outcast the Democrats. The reason behind it was the unorthodox and
unconventional campaign launched by the Trump team. According to The Washington Post,
while Hillary had raised 1.4 billion dollars for her election campaign, Donald Trump had raise
957.6 million dollars for his campaign. In terms of cash on hand too, Mrs. Clinton outweighed
trump by a huge margin. While Mrs. Clinton had more than 320 million dollars, Trump only had
7.6 million dollars (Washingtonpost.com, 2019). The major factor of Trump’s success could be
seen in the funds received through donations. Trump received 26% of his funds from donations

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whereas Mrs. Clinton received just 16% (Washingtonpost.com, 2019). This is significant
because it shows the way Trump relied on conducting massive rallies rather than “focusing on
door-knocking and get-out-the-vote operations” (Bbc.com, 2019). Apart from that, the many
controversies that surfaced during the campaigning against Trump were unable to stop his rising
popularity. On the other hand, Hillary Clinton’s one controversy was enough to reduce her
popularity and her race for the president-elect subsequently. Trump was charged with sexual
harassment, misogyny, and many such but the rate of these controversies popping up in the
media were so fast that people hardly had any chance of delving into one.
The difference in election campaigns of both the candidates is visible from the use of
social media in 2016. The Pew Research Institute conducted a study on the similarities and
differences between the social media usage of Trump, Mrs. Clinton and Bernie Sanders. The
study found that all the three candidates posted at similar rates in both Facebook and Twitter
between 11 May 2016 and 31 May 2016 although their focus and attention from the users was
different (Journalism.org, 2019). While Mrs. Clinton and Sanders highlighted their official
campaign communications using links, Trump used news media links most frequently. Trump
also stood out in retweeting the the tweets of ordinary people on Twitter whereas Mrs. Clinton
and Sanders hardly ever retweeted. The use of videos on social media platforms was mostly seen
in case of Mrs. Clinton and Sanders; Trump did not frequently use videos to communicate with
the voters (Journalism.org, 2019). This shows that the campaign tactics employed by Donald
Trump on social media was different from the other candidates. Overall, the election campaign
of 2016 was markedly different from the 2008 campaign in that the social media was given
unprecedented importance by the candidates, the traditional media could not correctly predict the

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outcomes, and the candidates shifted away from traditional method of campaigning. In addition,
the media too played a role in making one candidate more popular than the other.
The 2016 federal elections in Australia too saw a different form of campaigning than it
was in 2007. The use of social media for political campaigns was emerging greatly during 2010
itself with Twitter being the most used platform by political parties to campaign. However, the
2016 federal elections saw the emergence of various other forms of social media that became
tools for politicians and candidates to put forth their views. Instagram, podcasts, periscope and
Facebook Live were the new media that formed the powerful set of media for political
campaigns. Debates were broadcast live on Facebook and pictures were posted on Instagram
instantly from the political campaigns thus making it easier for the voters to be updated every
moment about the elections. Twitter on the other hand, became the “common room” for the
candidates just as it did for the US presidential election. The social media site allowed the
candidates to interact directly with their voters. The candidates were not the only ones who used
social media sites to attract the voters but the news media too made good use of it. The constant
debate, argument, verbal attack and counter-attack – all took place in an open forum for the
world to see during both the US presidential and Australian federal elections.
The election campaigns now have become somewhat permanent with the official federal
election campaigns losing its value. The rise of postmodern campaigning with the presence of
social media has made it easier for the candidates to launch their campaigns. In the pre-modern
era, campaigns depended mostly on the “traditional, face-to-face retail politics for getting out the
message” (Sites.hks.harvard.edu, 2019). During that period, newspaper, movie reels and radio
provided the major source of mediated news. This changed drastically with the modern
campaigns. The newspaper and radio have been replaced by the television and the movie reels

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have vanished completely. The videos being published on the social media have taken its place.
Although it would be wrong to state that newspapers have been replaced completely, it has lost
the value it held in the pre-modern and modern era of electing campaigns.
Conclusion
To conclude, it could be reiterated that there has been remarkable transformation of
election campaigns from the previous years to the contemporary era. This has been explained in
the essay using the example of the 2016 US presidential election campaign. In addition to that,
the 2016 Australian federal election campaign has also been used as an example to show the
change in the nature of political campaigns from the past until the present. The essay
demonstrated the way the now US President Donald Trump used unconventional ways of
campaigning and won the elections against a strong Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton. The
essay further showed the way the social media has been used as a powerful tool by the
candidates to win the confidence of the voters.

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References:
Bbc.com. (2019). Five reasons Donald Trump won. Retrieved from
https://www.bbc.com/news/election-us-2016-37918303
Fortune.com. (2019). Here's Proof That the Media Helped Create Donald Trump. Retrieved from
http://fortune.com/2016/06/14/media-trump/
Gambino, L., & Pankhania, M. (2019). How we got here: a complete timeline of 2016's historic
US election. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/07/us-
election-2016-complete-timeline-clinton-trump-president
Journalism.org. (2019). 2016 presidential candidates differ in their use of social media to connect
with the public. Retrieved from https://www.journalism.org/2016/07/18/candidates-
differ-in-their-use-of-social-media-to-connect-with-the-public/
News Coverage of the 2016 General Election: How the Press Failed the Voters. (2019).
Retrieved from https://shorensteincenter.org/news-coverage-2016-general-election/
Shorensteincenter.org. (2019). Pre-Primary News Coverage of the 2016 Presidential Race:
Trump’s Rise, Sanders’ Emergence, Clinton’s Struggle. Retrieved from
https://shorensteincenter.org/pre-primary-news-coverage-2016-trump-clinton-sanders/
Sites.hks.harvard.edu. (2019). The Rise of the Post-Modern Campaign?. Retrieved from
https://sites.hks.harvard.edu/fs/pnorris/Acrobat/VIRTUOUS/CHAPTER8.PDF
Washingtonpost.com. (2019). Election 2016 MONEY RAISED AS OF DEC. 31. Retrieved from
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/campaign-finance/