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In each the lead as much as and the quick aftermath of the US presidential election, President Donald Trump made claims of voter fraud and a rigged election, utilizing all channels obtainable to him, together with Twitter. Regardless of the obvious lack of proof for these accusations, they’ve arguably influenced the beliefs of thousands and thousands of People.

Twitter has been a main means by which the president has sought to set the agenda. Since he first took workplace, many individuals have speculated that a few of Trump’s tweets have been deployed to distract from damaging media protection. For instance, when the press reported on the US$25m Trump College settlement, he tweeted in regards to the Hamilton play controversy. When COVID-19 didn’t “simply go away” however as an alternative took a stranglehold on the US, he tweeted in regards to the “OBAMAGATE!” conspiracy idea.

A minimum of a few of these distractions appear to have labored. For instance, our earlier analysis confirmed how there was far larger public and media curiosity within the Hamilton controversy than the Trump College settlement. However the proof had been anecdotal – till now.

Our new analysis presents the primary empirical proof that Trump’s tweets systematically divert consideration away from subjects which are doubtlessly dangerous to him. Maybe much more importantly, we discovered that this diversion works and suppresses subsequent protection of probably dangerous information tales.

We requested two questions: is doubtlessly dangerous media protection adopted by elevated diversionary Twitter exercise by Trump? And does such diversion scale back subsequent media protection of that matter?

To check the hypotheses, we targeted on the content material of the New York Instances (NYT) and ABC World Information Tonight (ABC) headlines and the entire roughly 5,000 Trump tweets throughout his first two years in workplace. We selected the Mueller investigation into potential collusion with Russia because the dangerous matter. We then chosen a set of key phrases – “jobs”, “China” and “immigration” – that we assumed could be Trump’s go-to subjects on the time, primarily based on a scientific content material evaluation of his marketing campaign supplies and main speaking factors.

The staff hypothesised that the extra the NYT and ABC reported on the Mueller investigation, the extra Trump’s tweets would point out jobs, China and immigration, which – if the diversion have been profitable – would then be adopted by much less protection of the Mueller investigation by NYT and ABC the next day. The logic is illustrated within the graphic under.

The phrase cloud on the left incorporates the 50 most frequent phrases from all articles within the NYT. The 50 most frequent phrases occurring in Trump’s tweets are on the best.

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Our analyses offered robust proof that Trump’s tweets have been distracting the media. For instance, we discovered that every ABC headline regarding the Mueller investigation was related to 0.2 extra mentions of one of many key phrases in Trump’s tweets. In flip, every extra point out of one of many key phrases in a Trump tweet was related to 0.four fewer occurrences of the Mueller investigation than anticipated within the following day’s NYT.

To discover the robustness of those outcomes, we additionally carried out an expanded evaluation that thought of the president’s complete Twitter vocabulary as a possible supply of diversion. This evaluation corroborated our findings: “jobs” and “China” have been nonetheless Trump’s prime picks, however “tax”, “crime” and “North Korea” additionally featured prominently as diversionary subjects.

We additionally carried out a battery of checks to rule out various explanations and strengthen our claims of causal relationships between: a) the Mueller/Russia protection and Trump’s diversionary tweets, and b) his tweets and the following lower in Mueller/Russia protection.

For instance, after we thought of “placebo subjects”, akin to Brexit, no diversion was noticed. These placebo subjects introduced no political risk to Trump and have been chosen to span a wide range of unrelated domains, together with soccer and gardening. In different phrases, solely media reviews on Mueller/Russia – however not reviews on placebo subjects – resulted in a rise in diversionary Trump tweets.

It could be the case that the media just isn’t conscious of the affect that Trump’s tweeting has on them. The NYT, for instance, has explicitly warned in regards to the influence of Trump’s presidency on journalistic requirements. However the truth that suppression happens (when vital tales are usually not adopted up after Trump’s diversionary tweets) nonetheless implies that vital editorial selections could also be influenced by components regarding Trump’s tweets. This will nicely occur with out the editors’ intention – or certainly in opposition to their acknowledged insurance policies.

Strategic diversion just isn’t a brand new political instrument. It was the subject of the 1997 movie “Wag the Canine”, which noticed commentators draw parallels to then President Invoice Clinton’s dealing with of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. The previous adviser to Boris Johnson, Lynton Crosby, famously used a useless cat analogy to explain the technique. Nonetheless, social media has allowed political leaders extra direct and quick entry to their constituents and the media. Our evaluation reveals that they’ll use this pathway successfully to divert.

Learn extra:

Fox Information, Donald Trump’s cheerleaders and the journalists who challenged his narrative

Although Trump didn’t be re-elected, he continues to make use of Twitter prolifically (regardless of a few of his tweets being taken down for being deceptive). Because the attain of social media platforms continues to develop, different current and future leaders might interact in comparable kinds of behaviour in an try to steer the media narrative.

Maybe our paper can function a reminder to the media that its function in a democracy is to spotlight the subjects most vital to their audiences and to serve the general public curiosity. This generally means ignoring the pink herrings laid out on Twitter. Fortunately, some journalists, students and commentators have already labored this out.

Ullrich Ecker receives funding from the Australian Analysis Council.

Michael Jetter is affiliated with the IZA and CESifo.

Stephan Lewandowsky receives funding from the Australian Analysis Council, ESRC (by means of CREST), UKRI (by means of REPHRAIN), and Jigsaw.