Political Identity, Decision-Making and Communication in the Age of Digital Media: A Case Study on the 2016 US Elections
Political Identity, Decision-Making and Communication in the Age of Digital Media: A Case Study on the 2016 US Elections

Summary/Abstract: With the result of the USA presidential election in view, we can finally gain some clarity on the events that have unfolded over the past year. We have seen the rise in the polls of two outsiders in the primary elections of both political parties, one of them successfully winning his party’s nomination and the general election. In this paper I will discuss these phenomena focusing on the following lines of questioning: how these campaigns have coordinated on-the-ground activism with online communication in order to gather support, how online discourse has shaped and affected the content of these messages and the decision-making process of voting citizens, how the candidates’ processing through media helped produce their political identity and electoral bases, and what are the circumstances that have led to the peculiarities of this election cycle. In order to do this, I will use the tools provided by poststructuralist and critical theory analysis of the public sphere, mass-media and the modern construction of identity, all in relation to the structure of the modern democratic state.

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