Twitter against Trump: It's all about truth

by Florian Rötzer

[This article published on 7/29/2020 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Twitter-gegen-Trump-Es-geht-um-Wahrheit-4857249.html.]



Anyone who constantly talks about fake news will be caught up in it himself; but in the digital society there is no public space, no digital agora, it can't be the media

Donald Trump had also won the 2016 presidential election because he largely bypassed communication via the mainstream news media. With his unofficial and personal Twitter account @realDonaldTrump, the presidential candidate often acted as a troll beyond all custom and kept up the act as president. This provided entertainment, amusement and disgust, and the marginalized mainstream media could not help but pick up on the fireworks of insults, lies and provocations and add critical commentary in whatever way they could.

Trump thus created a huge echo chamber for himself, on the keyboard of tweets he attracted attention like the Pied Piper of Hameln, well aware that in a media-driven attention economy, the one who gets more attention wins, which can also happen through negative news. Trump was the attention artist as long as the non-traditional media like Twitter allowed him to get the most attention.

But Trump overstretched the bow in the Corona crisis. When people's lives are at stake in the midst of a flood of information that can hardly be judged independently, but apparently has to be judged with skepticism, even the dichotomies that Trump's populist efforts are trying to achieve become questionable. Whoever calls all other positions fake news, but spreads false information himself, loses not only credibility, but also fascination. In addition, Trump has been spreading more and more retweets via his account for some time now, which makes his person look shady, although he naturally has the effect of being confirmed by others in mind. Retweets are much more vulnerable and weaker than his own statements.

Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have just deleted another video from Breitbart News, which Trump had distributed widely, in which the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, which the president had promoted against Covid-19, was advertised as an effective drug. Trump had said - as had his clone Bolsonaro - that he was taking the drug - and so had business interests. In doing so, he wanted to set an example and reassure people that an effective drug against Covid-19 already exists. However, based on studies, scientists do not share this view. In early July, the FDA, the drug regulatory agency, also warned against using the drug to treat Covid-19 because of significant safety risks.

Twitter does not dare to reach Donald Trump, but the account of Donald Trump Junior was blocked for 12 hours. He had advertised the video, which also campaigned against the use of masks. The video featured doctors. Now they have the dilemma: "It is completely unacceptable for Twitter to silence someone who is passing on the views of medical experts who contradict the anti-hydroxychloroqine opinion," said a spokesperson for Trump Junior.

Twitter claims it's all about false and potentially harmful information, which is right, while at the same time the company is vying for truth and falsehood. Twitter is a non-public space and exercises domestic authority. It becomes problematic when the public discourse is controlled from private spaces. Politicians abuse the media public sphere, companies profit from it and it becomes clear that there is no democratically legitimized media public sphere.

The traditional media claim to be the instance of public discourse that critically links politics with society. But now, in contrast to the age of mass media, the issue is how politics can communicate with citizens via public platforms. Interest-based censorship, that would be it, even of disinformation or false claims, would then have to be a consequence of the discourse, but not, as always, be decreed as representative of the alleged truth.

How this can take place is explosive and difficult to resolve. But it cannot be that false statements by governments can be spread in public while those by citizens are frowned upon. Democracies have no authority to represent the truth. This is another reason why public spaces must be created in cyberspace. (Florian Rötzer)



Will Donald Trump lose the election?

by Thomas Schuster

[This article published on 7/27/2020 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Wird-Donald-Trump-die-Wahl-verlieren-4852715.html?seite=all.]



Trump's campaign is in chaos

If Donald Trump's luck doesn't turn around soon, he will lose the upcoming presidential election. For weeks now, his poll results have been in a range that, even taking into account considerable tolerance, points to a dramatic defeat against Democratic challenger Joe Biden.

Trump's track record in the summer of the 2020 pandemic is disastrous: the US records about 70,000 corona infections and about 1,000 deaths every day, with the total now standing at 150,000. The economy, which had recovered slightly since the lockdowns, is losing momentum again. More than 30 million Americans - about 20 percent of the workforce - are receiving unemployment benefits.

The current president, who is still in office, therefore has a systematic problem in the current election campaign: he cannot show any current successes. Because of this, he has to divert the attention of voters from his own achievements and try to steer the public agenda in a direction more favorable to him. He seems to have succeeded in doing this in the 2016 election campaign. In the 2020 election campaign, chaos reigns.

Trump: "Restoring honesty in government"

The Gallup Organization, a leading opinion research firm, has provided evidence that Trump's method of agenda-setting was effective in the 2016 election campaign. As Gallup found out, when it came to Trump's opponent, Hillary Clinton, most Americans had one word in mind: "emails.

The Democratic candidate had been under criticism since 2015 because, as Secretary of State, she had used a private email account instead of her department's servers. This led to several investigations by the FBI, which the media reported intensively on.

Donald Trump contributed to the negative impression that many voters had of Clinton in his campaign speeches. For months, often shortly after his speeches began, he commented on the corruption of his rival and the email scandal he claimed to have committed. According to Trump, he would restore honesty in the American government after his election victory.

To make sure that the attacks on Clinton were right, he nicknamed the Democrat "Crooked Hillary". Trump used the nickname for the first time at an election campaign rally in April 2016 and systematically thereafter. Starting in July 2016, he often first spoke of "Crooked Hillary" and then made reference to the emails, often repeatedly.

Trump himself offered his opponents a far less clear goal. He surprised with unconventional manoevres and provoked as a challenger to the political establishment as he presented himself. None of the issues related to Trump, according to the Gallup study, were in the news for long. In fact, it was Trump's campaign speeches that caught the voters' attention the most.

Trump or Biden - who drifts more?

In 2020, things are going less well for Trump. Four years after his narrow victory over Clinton, Trump himself is for many a representative of the establishment whose work is at stake.

According to "Politico", Trump is struggling to turn the focus away from a referendum on his work and turn the election into a contest with his challenger. To this end, Trump's strategists have invested millions of dollars in the "Swing States" to reduce the lead of Democratic candidate Joe Biden among blacks and Latinos.

In 2016, Trump's team succeeded in reducing the voter turnout of black Americans in the most contested states by attacking Clinton. At that time, according to "Politico," the turnout of black voters fell for the first time in two decades. This was exacerbated by the fact that Trump's chances were considered slim and many people did not go to the polls.

Another line of attack by the Republicans is Joe Biden's allegedly impaired mental abilities. At 77, the Democrat is no longer the youngest. "Joe Biden is slipping," "Joe Biden is drifting away," explains a Trumps commercial, which is supposed to anchor the image of a decrepit opponent in the minds of voters. But not all of Trump's advisors think this strategy is a good idea, as it could turn out to be a boomerang for the president.

Voter acquisition by telephone

Donald Trump received much favorable publicity in 2016, as his campaign meetings generated a strong response. This pillar of the strategy has broken away due to the pandemic: Since the risk of infection is currently too great, plans for public mass events in which Trump can show off his show talent were discarded (populist without rabble). Instead, Trump is trying to win voters over the phone.

The fact that Trump has now even been forced to cancel the Republican Party's convention, which was scheduled for August in the state of Florida, at short notice shows that Trump is not even master of his own election campaign. The big event would have given him another chance to present himself as president of the common people who cheered him enthusiastically.

That things are not going well for Trump is demonstrated by recent attempts to discredit his opponent: While he had previously pitied his opponent as the tired old "Sleepy Joe", he is now trying to turn him into the destroyer of America, with whose election the country is doomed. Under Biden, terrorists would freely vagabond through the country and the American "Way of Life" would be abolished.

"He will destroy this country," Trump said in an interview with Fox News. With Biden, the country will fall to the level of Venezuela. "They have no water now, they have no food and they have no medicine," Trump said. "This is what will happen here if he wins." With Biden, the "radical left" will take over the country.

"Performative authoritarianism" as COVID therapy?

As recent events in Portland, Oregon, show, the president is trying to demonstrate in advance that only he can save the country from the chaos into which he has plunged it: To this end, he is sending security forces in camouflage uniforms to simulate the war in the urban jungle against parts of his own population in front of running cameras.

American media have already noticed that Trump is deliberately working on the image of a dystopia that he claims only he can prevent. The purpose of the security forces' interventions in Portland, according to "The Atlantic," is to send a message to the public: "A performance designed to show how much Trump rejects 'liberal' Americans, 'urban' Americans, and 'democratic' Americans.

Whether Trump will succeed in redirecting the priorities of the American public in the direction he wants remains to be seen. The Corona crisis is currently the dominant issue in the United States.

Florida has more than 10,000 infections a day. The number of confirmed infections has quadrupled in one month. There is an evening curfew on Miami's South Beach promenade. In California, too, the number of both infections and deaths is rising steadily.

It is not Donald Trump but COVID-19 that is setting the agenda for the summer 2020 election campaign, and after weeks of trying to solve the problem by ignoring it, the president has now been caught up by reality. For Trump, the chances are good that he will go down in history as the pandemic president after only one term in office.

Dr. habil. Thomas Schuster, former consultant at Roland Berger and former author of the Frankfurter Allgemeine, is a professor of communication and media studies. His books "Staat und Medien. Über die elektronische Konditionierung der Wirklichkeit" and "Die Geldfalle. How Media and Banks Turn Investors into Losers" have been published by S. Fischer and Rowohlt Verlag.



After Corona - Rethinking the future

by Franz Alt

[This article published on 7/24/2020 is translated abridged from the German on the Internet, https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Nach-Corona-Zukunft-neu-denken-4852271.html.]



Before the Corona pandemic we had the climate crisis, the energy crisis, the refugee crisis and the financial crisis. Now we have the health crisis, the new hunger crisis and the democracy crisis. Will we ever get out of the crisis mode again?

The all-decisive question throughout human history has always been: What do we learn from the crises? Crises can be our most important learning tools. Everyone knows this from his or her private life. But it also applies in politics, at work and in business…

After Corona we all have to rethink the future.

More from Franz Alt on the Sonnenseite.com