Leiden University Student Repository

Kwakernaat, Erik (2018)

Trump’s World: Pathos, Twitter, and the Role of Social Media in a Post-truth Society

Bachelor thesis | Engelse taal en cultuur (BA)

The traditional hierarchy within the study of rhetoric changed with the introduction of the digital age. The Internet, and social media services such as Twitter in particular, have become so deeply integrated with our daily lives that we unconsciously have started to adapt to the very principle that characterizes the digital world: less is more. This paper investigates the theory that emotions now outweigh the importance of facts, and uses the recent victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 US Presidential Elections to illustrate this. It analyses 52 of Trump’s tweets, collected from both his campaign period and the first year of his presidency to support the claim that pathos has become the leading force in today’s rhetoric. Simultaneously, this paper suggests that that the reason why 140-character messages were able to dethrone years’ worth of studies is embedded in the concept of post-truth, and comments on the extent to which the Internet and social media are already capable of both...Show moreThe traditional hierarchy within the study of rhetoric changed with the introduction of the digital age. The Internet, and social media services such as Twitter in particular, have become so deeply integrated with our daily lives that we unconsciously have started to adapt to the very principle that characterizes the digital world: less is more. This paper investigates the theory that emotions now outweigh the importance of facts, and uses the recent victory of Donald Trump in the 2016 US Presidential Elections to illustrate this. It analyses 52 of Trump’s tweets, collected from both his campaign period and the first year of his presidency to support the claim that pathos has become the leading force in today’s rhetoric. Simultaneously, this paper suggests that that the reason why 140-character messages were able to dethrone years’ worth of studies is embedded in the concept of post-truth, and comments on the extent to which the Internet and social media are already capable of both influencing and giving shape to our thoughts.Show less

Rhetoric

Pathos

Donald Trump

Post-truth

Internet

Twitter

Tweets

Social Media

Author

Kwakernaat, Erik

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Supervisors

Foster, A.

ECTS Credits

10

Language

en