The Role of Traditional and Social Media During the ‘Pandemic’ Presidential Election in the USA: Legal and Constitutional Aspects
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51480/compress.2021.4-1.234Keywords:
media responsibility, traditional media, social media, 2020 presidential election in the USAAbstract
The U.S. presidential elections in 2020 went down in history for many reasons, including the record turnout, the record number of mail votes, and the announcement of victory by the losing candidate, the incumbent president. The American media expected this post-election disinformation and behaved responsibly by consistently reporting the lack of a winner when a significant number of votes remained uncounted in the key states.
Twitter, thanks to D. Trump, became one of the main forms of communication between the president and the public. Therefore, the precautions introduced by this portal regarding the premature announcement of victory were particularly important.
The analysis is based on the broadcasts of the main American TV stations (CNN, Fox News) and Trump’s tweets. Using critical discourse analysis, we examine the thesis that the responsibility of traditional and social media in 2020 made enormous social unrest impossible and led to a peaceful change of power.
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