Populists trumpet ‘forbidden fruit’ on social media
Former U.S. president Donald Trump has announced that he will launch a new social media platform called “Truth Social,” only a few months after his ban from Twitter, as well as Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitch.
Social media are now an indispensable tool for politicians as it allows for direct communication between themselves and voters. With 280 characters or less, they are able to send a direct message regarding their life or thoughts to their audience.
This is done without the filter of a traditional media.however, following a politician on Twitter is not the most interesting thing to do, most will say. They will publish condolences in the wake of a natural disaster, condemning attacks on their soil or abroad and even express their sadness to the family of a public figure who recently died. The same communication of banality goes to congratulate athletes or sports teams who just won a trophy or to commemorate a national holiday.
Regardless, Twitter becomes an effective forum for politicians who are snubbed by the media due to their ideas. This platform is used as a tool to bypass the traditional media, which are often hostile to them. They seek provocation with a behaviour on Twitter that would fray the nerves of any political communications consultant.
Trump, with his 88.7 million followers by the time Twitter suspended his account in January 2021, undoubtedly belongs to this category.
Trump’s Twitter account stood out from other politicians by its vulgar, populist and self-centred language. Personal attacks as simplistic reflections succeeded one another.
Yet, when one looks closely, one notices that Trump used his Twitter account to take a position as a pamphleteer, minority and victim. Not only did he pretend to be the one telling the truth that the media hide, he was also the one who opposed the dominant thought of elites. This communication strategy brought him a lot of success.
The fact that he was banned from Twitter and other social media suggests that Trump is not only being intimidated by the traditional media, but also by the new media or what he called “the tyranny of the Big Tech.”
By giving the impression that the media and new media censor his ideas and values to promote theirs, his ideas and values are thus presented as a kind of forbidden fruit.
The success of populist politicians is often explained by their opposition to the progressive discourse that is portrayed as a dominant doxa. By transgressing this supposedly dominant thought, they take a rebellious stance. They oppose the politically correct with all that implies as a power of seduction. Thus, their social media accounts take the form of a speech uninhibited, a desire to break taboos and oppose the do-gooders, or even a sort of “Thought Police.”
The new social media network Truth Social can not only become an attractive one for populist politicians, but also a way to spread fake news and conspiracy theories. This type of populist and anti-elitist rhetoric, less common in mainstream media and more and more controlled on the main social media, could contribute to the eventual success of Truth Social.