Leaders in the United States, particularly Obama and Trump, have introduced a method of political engagement based on digital strategies. However, this shift has not eliminated representative democracy, nor has it brought about the direct democracy they promised. Instead, it has fostered a fluctuation in identity between digital empowerment and disempowerment. This is at the core of what new media researcher Elizabeth Losh terms “Selfie Democracy.”
In her book titled “Selfie Democracy: The New Digital Politics of Disruption and Insurrection,” Losh poses the question of how political practice can be reshaped through a new electronic identity. The answer comes through examining the digital practices of political leaders, relying on interviews with former White House staff, archival research, and a range of public data. The book reveals significant insights into the digital practices of key players in modern American politics—Barack Obama and Donald Trump as former presidents—and how their approaches to local governance and crisis management relate to their technological choices.
Direct Democracy:
The author notes that Obama was associated with a wide array of digital practices during his time in the White House, from taking selfies to directing drones. In contrast, Donald Trump’s presidency was largely linked to behavior normalized by a single tech company: Twitter.
The digitization learning process for both presidents involved a complex interplay of technologies, platforms, devices, and advisors. Both Obama and Trump utilized Silicon Valley language in similar ways, echoing themes of transparency, personalization, engagement, and direct access to citizens. This led political scientists and pollsters to discuss the characteristics of the so-called “Obama-Trump voter,” who voted for both the 44th and 45th presidents, questioning what could inspire the same voter to support such opposing candidates. Clearly, both campaigns employed the language of direct digital democracy as a tool for radical change.
Communication Discourse:
During Obama’s initial presidential campaign, his team employed unconventional tactics to gain voter support via YouTube, using videos that incorporated content from other clips, such as blending footage from Obama’s “Yes We Can” campaign with pop stars and celebrities singing an uplifting anthem about the prospects of winning the election. This clip clearly pointed to ideas about how to shape political discourse in a dialogic manner.
On the other hand, throughout much of Obama’s first term, Donald Trump expressed very few personal opinions online, focusing his self-expression efforts through NBC. At that time, he aimed for high ratings to boost his show “The Apprentice,” viewing social media as a means to that end. Financial reports indicated that the show was a more lucrative income source than much of his real estate portfolio.
Emojis, seen as a good way to enhance text, served as another source for understanding Trump’s rise to prominence online. For example, six months after his ascent to the presidency, Fox News anchor Stuart Varney praised the stock market performance on television, claiming the country had gained four trillion dollars due to optimism surrounding the new Republican administration. The next day, Trump’s tweet commenting on Varney included emojis of the American flag, a money bag, a positive graph, and a display device. This strategy of adding emojis raised essential questions about the state of presidential discourse, why emojis became significant for the Trump administration, and how they became a natural part of political rhetoric, even for a relatively dry subject like fiscal policy.
Transparency Discourse:
With Obama, a new generation of technocrats entered the White House, fundamentally different from earlier IT professionals who came from military, academic, or traditional business backgrounds. While the previous technocrats understood their primary directive as maintaining files, their newer counterparts believed that digitization had become more efficient through computing, especially with the smart cities movement integrating technology into every aspect of urban infrastructure. In this context, Obama’s White House website was designed as an entry point to other open public data sites that allowed citizens to see the inner workings of the government for themselves, reviewing budgets, searching for regulatory language, or monitoring government officials’ activities.
The author mentions that Trump copied his administration’s approach to digital citizenship and promoted his ideologies about transparency by fueling online conspiracy theories related to “Spygate” and “Obamagate.” Trump called for “transparency” on Twitter dozens of times and employed former reality TV stars as staff in the White House, utilizing reality television segments at press conferences.
Trump also marketed his administration’s commitment to transparency through photographs he posted with piles of documents, suggesting a display of disclosure without revealing anything substantial. For instance, he tweeted a picture of himself signing his tax return when he was a candidate in 2016, but none of the actual information regarding his financial resources was visible.
After his election, Trump presented heaps of folders purportedly filled with signed documents to control his assets and avoid conflicts of interest, yet reporters were again barred from seeing the contents of these files. In another press conference, the details of a healthcare plan meant to replace “Obamacare” amounted to a stack of printouts significantly smaller than the set of regulations it was intended to replace. According to Losh, reporters complained that many of these large paper displays served merely as theatrical props, employing visual illusions and other tactics capable of raising questions but without genuine knowledge.
Participation Discourse:
During Obama’s presidency, White House staff aimed to provide more direct participatory opportunities for citizens and increase personal responsiveness to their individual inquiries, hoping political participation in the U.S. could be entirely reimagined using new technologies. Ordinary people could finally have a more significant role in governing the country, as Macon Phillips, Obama’s chief digital strategist in 2009, stated, “Citizen engagement will be a priority for the administration, and the internet will play a vital role in that.”
To facilitate greater direct participation, significant trust was placed in young White House staff managing online petition systems and social media accounts. Fischer worked on Obama’s “Twitter Town Hall 2011,” and newcomers like Fischer were expected to educate their older political counterparts on the digital etiquette necessary for interacting with voters.
To assess this approach in the early months of the Obama administration, an interview was conducted with Professor Christopher Gilty regarding the viability of the White House’s new approach to political engagement. In Gilty’s view, social media was an imperfect means for the radical transformation of political participation that might be attainable through technology. He explained that participation could be “good or bad” when tied to new media and communication technologies saturated in our lives, emphasizing the need to acknowledge that the vast array of “servers, clouds, mobile devices, tablets, cameras, passwords, and satellites” provides “personal freedom,” expression, and mobility but also introduces insidious devices of surveillance and paranoia into citizens’ lives.
Conversely, “participation” was not a common term in the right-wing lexicon by 2021, and conservative commentators enjoyed mocking “participation.” The term “engagement” did not appear in Trump’s tweets; instead, he preferred the word “action,” which he used over 200 times in his speeches. Yet, the assault on the Capitol demonstrated the strength of Trump’s calls for participation from his supporters. A significant portion of this activity was defined by the digital performance showcasing their political loyalty through status updates and taking selfies during their incursion of the state symbol of representative democracy.
Access Discourse:
During his eight years in office, Obama delivered nearly four hundred weekly addresses with a deliberate format aimed at speaking directly to the American people. Losh explains that the Obama administration relied on nostalgic metaphors of the father figure in government, a role embodied by Franklin Roosevelt’s weekly radio addresses, intended to soothe national fears during the Great Depression and World War II.
According to the author, Obama’s “fireside chat” strategy was so compelling that he often sat next to a fireplace during his weekly addresses. However, he further developed past methods by incorporating contemporary internet traditions more suitable to the 21st-century notion of accessibility; there were no visible journalists or staff, providing viewers with what appeared to be direct access to the President’s thoughts and feelings.
In Trump’s era, social media was used as a means of direct communication or as a tool for outreach. Trump continued the public diplomacy efforts of the Obama administration, which utilized YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter to bypass gatekeepers and directly engage with the masses, reflecting his personal interests. Supporters expressed their love for him through access to his clubs and hotels, and he financially benefited from these arrangements as a social media influencer.
In conclusion, the author discusses the 2020 American elections and the differences between the campaigns of Presidents Biden and Trump regarding their use of digital technology. The main differences can be summarized in terms of followers’ volume and engagement depth; Donald Trump boasted over 1.5 million followers on Snapchat, a number that tripled during his 2020 election campaign, while Biden’s campaign mentioned little regarding a more modest follower count. However, Trump found his content targeted by site moderators and platform designers under the pretext of banning misleading information and hate that affected their platforms, suggesting that Silicon Valley companies began these steps to preserve their platforms.
On another note, the author considers Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris as significant for this reason, as she brought a different campaign style related to social media presence and strong connections with Silicon Valley companies. According to The New York Times, “critics of the tech industry are concerned that a Biden administration with Harris would mean a return to the close relationship Silicon Valley enjoyed with the White House during the Obama era.”
Source:
Elizabeth Losh, Selfie Democracy: The New Digital Politics of Disruption and Insurrection, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England, 2022.
