Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019
The visual presidency of Donald Trump's first hundred days: Political image making and digital media
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Date of Graduation
2019
ORCID
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8451-2721
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts (BA)
Department
School of Communication Studies
Advisor(s)
Dan Schill
Lindsey A. Harvell-Bowman
Lindsey Shook
Abstract
From frequent scrum photos of the president holding up signed executive orders in the Oval Office to images of the president energetically sitting behind the wheel of a Mack truck parked outside his back door, like previous administrations, visuals have been central to Donald Trump's presidency. This chapter analyzes the visuals on White House social media accounts (i.e., Twitter and Facebook) in Trump's first 100 days office and explores how his administration used visuals as an essential vehicle for storytelling, image building, and persuading. Building on previous research on the communicative functions of visual symbols in politics, the chapter finds that the Trump administration used socially-mediated images to build an image based on success, power, and leadership and to legitimize his new administration.
Recommended Citation
Strand, Ryan T., "The visual presidency of Donald Trump's first hundred days: Political image making and digital media" (2019). Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019. 718.
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/honors201019/718
Included in
American Politics Commons, Communication Technology and New Media Commons, Mass Communication Commons, Social Influence and Political Communication Commons, Social Media Commons
