Quels rôles ont joués les médias dans l’élection de Donald Trump?

Bravo à tous pour ces excellents commentaires et analyses sur l'impact des médias sur l'opinion publique. C'est d'ailleurs l'un des thèmes qui pourrait tomber au brevet en EMC .... Me voilà rassurée quant à votre capacité à apporter des arguments clairs et percutants. Il faudra juste les écrire en français au brevet :-) Excellent travail ! Merci Mme Decriem !

I am so impressed by everyones' points of view.....looking forward to hearing more from these future voters!

First off, media plays a huge role in politics now. More than it should actually. Millions of people in the world are very influenced by the media when it comes to politics as well. It’s a proven fact that the less you know about politics, the more you will be influenced by media. The fact is both Trump and Clinton got lots of publicity. But Clinton had more positive support from the bigger media platforms because of a liberal bias. Many people forget that publicity and support are very different things. And the media takes advantage of these differences for both sides. It’s important to not let media and bias get in the way of political issues.

Why the Media got it so Wrong on Trump and Brexit

Donald Trump’s election had US media allegation. A lot of what they discussed, applied to the United Kingdom's Brexit and their media allegations.
The media must adjust. The problems are really complex and they can easily accuse the liberal favoritism and elitism.
The article quotes, “big media has too easily become part of the political/celebrity bubble and tends to forget that journalism is meant to be an “outsider” activity.” Celebrities are to blame, they have taken too many journalists into the arms of who they want to be interviewed.
The article also quotes, “Too much of the media spends too much time talking to itself and not to the communities it serves.” A lot of companies compete against each other to try to get the best interviews and get the most money, so they can be successful.
The news media is going through an economic change. The advertising rates are falling and the revenues are not growing fast enough to make up the money they need. As a result, we have a lot of major news cuts in the US and to a large extent in the UK.
Newsrooms have failed to deliver to diversity and economic differences.. The most part are white and middle class citizens. This causes a major loss of views, attitudes and approaches.
The media is struggling and we need to support more people such as diversity and interview different people to fix this issue.

Media can have a large effect on modern elections. In the technology intensive 21st century, media has an enormous influence on the outcome of elections. Entire news networks can have biased opinions, and almost always do. As well they can use their enormous pull among voters to get a candidate elected merely because they would be beneficial to their individual business or situation. When news networks display bias, they can impart this bias onto millions of their followers. In this election there were were two distinct forms of media influence, social media, and mainstream media. Mainstream media came out hugely in support of hillary and spent nearly all of 2 campain years badmouthing trump, exposing his scandals, and virtually ignoring the scandals produced by Hilary. They also gave no coverage to Bernie Sanders when he was running for the nomination, showing compliance to the DNC. On the other hand social media gave Trump a lot of publicity, mostly negative publicity, but in such large quantities that a buzz was created and trump was on everyone's mind for a year.

The media definitely influences the public's opinion. For example, on Instagram there are offensive memes posted about Donald Trump. It is often portrayed as a laughing matter which is not okay. Also in twitter, people are judgmental, they argue aggressively with other people. We could assume that probably half of the information on social media is wrong. In our society today, people often use social media to express anything negative about someone. This is the case for Donald Trump. People who go on social media everyday will see progressively that at least one post is about Donald trump. I agree that one post won't change a person's opinion but perhaps several posts against trump can have an effect.
In an article i read, it says that journalists write only what catches the audience's attention. In Trump's case, he is what the audience talks about most, especially because election day is approaching. In medias (magazines newspapers), that is all what they talk about. For teenagers, the election is something that we talk about a lot at school during recess. I think that if you don't really keep up with the elections (reading the newspaper or watching news), but you check on instagram or twitter, it can have an effect on what you might think because the foundation of the comments are already based off of opinions and not facts.
To counter that, I do not think that the media helped Trump win the elections. Most of the posts about Trump aren't positive. I don't see how this can help Trump win the elections but i see how this can spread word (mostly negative) about Trump.
In conclusion, i think the media can change people's opinions but i don't think it helped Trump with the elections.

Media played an important role in Donald Trump’s election. One the media (namely journalists in this case) did this was by determining him as the most “newsworthy” and then doing what they do best: giving him free airtime so as to attract more viewers. This resulted in his rise in the polls, ultimately giving him the Republican nomination and then the presidency. In 2015, Fox News gave Donald Trump almost 24 hours of free coverage, which definitely helped him get his controversial ideas across to millions of Americans. Another way Trump was able to spread his ideas was through social networking such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Social media is a colossal part of our everyday lives and is extremely effective in spreading ideas through online trends. Trump was able to use social networking in order to save an extraordinary amount of money on his campaign. In conclusion, it is clear that both of these forms of media were quite effective in his winning the presidential election.

Media has a very huge impact on Donald Trump’s election as the president of The United States of America. We’ve realized Trump’s irrational behavior on his social media websites drew a large amount of attention to him. More and more people payed attention which means more and more people knew who he was. Trump says “I find social media to be a way to communicate about my campaign". Many thought his comments and his ideas were simply jokes, others took his political and unpolitical views very seriously. Some people claim that Donald Trump has voiced people's opinions in a way no other president has.
News coverage also helped Donald Trump a lot. The news often commented on Trump's ways and his campaign, and more people tuned into the news. Overall people knew who trump was and thanks to that he became very successful at winning this election.
In conclusion media and the election play a huge role. They play hand in hand, because the more attention you get the more successful you get.

Je pense que les réseaux sociaux ont beaucoup influencés les élections récentes, et surtout une influence sur les adolescents. Beaucoup de personnes avaient honte de dire qu'elles votaient pour Trump car ils avaient peur d’être appeler raciste ou sexiste a cause de tous les propos raciste et sexiste évoqué par le candidat. Même si il y avait beaucoup de polémiques autour de Trump, il dit dans un interview qu'il pouvait toujours démentir les propos avec des chaines de télévisions comme CBS. Le candidat avait aussi beaucoup plus de "followers" sur les réseaux sociaux que la candidate démocrate, Hillary Clinton. Beaucoup de votants voulaient du changement dans le pays, donc ne voulaient pas d'Hillary Clinton qui suivait les pas du président précédent, Barack Obama.

We can say that our media has been influenced in this past election. It was at the start of the presidential race where sexist and inappropriate messages were thrown around on both of the leading parties: Democrat and Republican. We see that the outcome of this election proved everyone wrong on who was most likely to win. On certain famous websites we would always see that Hillary Clinton would win without a fight or she was winning in certain states. But we now see that our former president Donald Trump proved everyone wrong. We were so influenced by the media and famous news reports that we were blinded by what the actual happened. We see during the debates that Hillary clearly won at least two of them which was supposed to lead to her election. But on election night we saw many swing states turned to the republican party. This was a huge surprise for the Democrats. Some states which were Democrat from the beginning switched at the last seconds. This was a huge shock. I feel like Hillary Clinton might have been to confident in some states which she did not even bother going because she knew she would have the college educated vote.

The media gave Trump all the coverage he needed to become president. CNN even said they were wrong for playing Donald's entire coverage without editing them. This coverage raised his polls because before the coverage trump was getting thrashed but when the media started saying everything Trump said he go more voters. With this coverage it also become "incorrect" to vote for Trump with the extended coverage showing that he had many scandalous acts people that were going to vote for him didn't mention they would vote for him. From just Fox News Trump got 30 million in exposure which is 24 hours exposure from just one network, anyone with that much exposure and saying the same thing over and over can get imprinted in people's minds. To conclude the reason why people voted for Trump was that his ideas got imprinted in people'es minds and when something is imprinted in your mind it's hard to get it out of their mind. Also the polls got it wrong with the Brexit and Trump winning because it was viewed incorrect to vote for Trump and to vote to leave the Brexit so people didn't reveal who they want to vote for and when it came to election day people were amazed how a reality tv star is our president.

After the 2016 election, media, specifically social, was criticized for producing false assumptions about the way the election would end. This was a similar situation as Brexit. In both situations almost every poll assumed that the numbers would lean a specific way but ended with the resounding opposite. Social media, according to The Conversation, spent “too much time talking to itself and not the community it serves”. This is basically saying that websites would look at it’s own polls and base their predictions off of those instead of creating different polls and asking different demographics. The internet is a large place but as television watching rates begin to drop it leads to one less place people can receive their information therefore one less place for people to see both sides of an argument. Diversity has been slightly disregarded as well in the past months with polling happening in mainly black communities or the opposite. This very obviously effects the output of polls. Media like Facebook which bases itself on the sharing of internet articles are “sewers” of misinformation, people liking and sharing without reading. Freedom to use media any way you like is a freedom we all deserve however should this relentless freedom effect the outcome of polls and elections? Should it be allowed to tamper with something as important as the decision for world leaders?

I believe that traditional medias such as newspapers have a large influence on public opinions because in a democracy they are supposed to objectively convey public opinions. Therefore, if they convey false information, they can influence and change the public opinion instead of reflecting it. For example, major news stations in America such as The New York Times and The LA Times are based in the metropolitan, typically democratic, east coast and west coast of the country. The states on these coasts voted for Clinton, which means that the journalists in those areas were in an environment that corresponded with their pro-Clinton predictions, however that environment was not representative or reflective of the totality of America which elected Trump. This means that their predictions were inaccurate, yet broadcast all over the US and therefore influencing public opinion. Trump is undeniably a revolutionary presidential candidate, and while most media stations currently bash him due to his expressed desire to limit freedom of the press, the media thrives when they have crazy, unbelievable, and controversial stories to publish. Trump is essentially a personification of all of these elements, and the media has, perhaps unconsciously, given him more coverage to boost their ratings. This has also influenced the public opinion, because if people see Trump more than Clinton, he will come to mind quicker and people may vote for him because they know him better.

Donald Trump has won the elections, the electoral vote, and believes that certain social medias such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram helped his victory. Many people actually follow the political facts and have their own opinions, but others just go by social media influence. Though Hillary got more support by people, Trump got more publicity even though it was mostly negative publicity, but that doesn't matter to him and those who voted for him. Scandals would be made and were spread quickly so people would follow those, instead of what the candidates actually do for the election. Along with scandals, another way social media influenced the elections is that people place filters on Donald and Hillary, meaning that they have bias opinions on more of their characteristics instead of their actual political views. Overall, social media influenced those who went by what was mostly spread on the media, which was Trump and that a lot people don’t care as much for the politics but the scandals and publicity of any sort.

Media has a very powerful role in the presidential race, such as using media as propaganda to support their preferred candidate, yet that is only one of the many.
On social media, anyone can put up biased information of their preferred candidate; in this presidential race, the media was a battleground that fluctuated between a majority of Hillary support to Trump support. The un-educated or the sheep would be influenced by these, resulting in inaccurate polls. This results in uninformed opinions and biases, possibly resulting in an unqualified president. Yet it seems that the more uneducated the opinions, the stronger they are, and the more abundant they are, resulting in voter peer-pressure, influencing other people’s educated opinions.
In conclusion, media is crucial in elections, as it influences the educated and the un-educated severely.

First, we have to understand why most medias got it wrong.People get their information on the election from polls, but what most people don't realize, is that the polls aren't reliable. There are multiple reasons behind this. The first reason is that different sources have different poll sizes. One source might call a thousand people and another might call two-thousand. This creates extreme differences in the results. Plus, not everyone answers calls from strange numbers. They also might ask the opinion of more democrats than republicans. There is also the timing of the polls. Usually polls come out around the same time but peoples views change constantly. Therefore, when the polls call a certain person, that person has the ability to change their mind two seconds later. Also, every source has a different manner of asking questions. Some questions aren't as specific as others and therefore provoke different responses from the public. Lastly, people in general are untrustworthy. People are embarrassed and scared to admit to their opinion. Therefore, people will say that they like one candidate even though they like another.
All these unreliable polls go to the media. People read the media and then form opinions around the media. The polls were saying that Hillary Clinton was going to win. It is no secret that many people are extremely lazy. So, Hillary supporters, after seeing these polls, came to the conclusion that no matter what Hillary Clinton would become president and they didn't have to go out of their way to vote for her. The polls that were predicting Hillary's success may very well have been her downfall.
Media influenced people towards Trump in other ways too. Trump has fed the media by being an very vocal person. He criticizes people openly and became offensive to many people. Though many people were repelled by his words, it gave him publicity. People were forced to acknowledge him and therefore form opinions about him. Those who didn't want to pay attention to his words, paid attention to his political views. A large portion of these people owned businesses and believe that his policies would help them. There is also the small percent of people who shared his not-so political views and the people who just wanted a good laugh.
In conclusion, media and polls play a large part in presidential elections. They influence people's minds and they are often unreliable.

Today our media influences our view of the presidential candidates by critiquing them in a non bias way. In our recent elections the presidential candidate, Donald Trump, used media to win his election. Unlike, Hillary Clinton, who spent millions of dollars in campaign new media, Donald Trump used his twitter to persuade his 28 million followers and more. His tweets would quickly go viral and it was an easy source for him to debunk lies spread about him and post his, sometimes scandalous, views. Trump’s riveting media post often led to more media coverage from things like Fox News or morning shows.Trump used media to his advantage while Hillary disregarded it. However, media is also an opportunity to post whatever information you value, whether it be discriminatory or blatant lies. This leads to deliberate misinformation that many people will follow blindly. Media is known to be very one sided and people using media can easily create their own “online echo chambers”, where they surround themselves with people that only reflect their own views. In order to resolve this issue we need deeper fact checking and more independent journalism.

I think that social media does have a very big influence on people's opinions, especially adolescents since they take up the majority of the users on platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter... Especially during the Presidential Election of 2016, users on social media have picked out all of the things that they want other users to know about the candidates, good or bad, and published them. Donald Trump was the main victim of having his own words used against him, leading many people to believe that he was going to lose the election for sure. But, under the radar, all Trump supporters kept quiet about their opinions because it had since become "Un-American" or "politically incorrect" to be pro-Trump. Although some aspects of social media haven't been in Donald Trump's favor, other aspects were. For example, he was extremely active on the internet; he gained 4 million more Twitter followers than his candidate, he was the most Googled candidate, and became the most mentioned on Twitter and Facebook. Unlike polls, social media predicts more accurate results since social media is a more open and "free-speech positive" outlet whereas many people lie when talking to pollsters. In conclusion, social media has helped both candidates of the 2016 Presidential Election in some way however social standards and what is considered to be politically just has gotten in the way of receiving accurate poll results whereas social media depicted more realistic results.

Today our media influences our view of the presidential candidates by criticizing them in a non biais way. In our recent elections the presidential candidate, Donald Trump, used media to win his election. Unlike, Hillary Clinton, who spent millions of dollars in campaign new media, Donald Trump used his twitter to persuade his 28 million followers and more. His tweets would quickly go viral and it was an easy source for him to debunk lies spread about him and post his, sometimes scandalous, views. Trump’s riveting media post often led to more media coverage from things like Fox News or morning shows.Trump used media to his advantage while Hillary disregarded it. However, media is also an opportunity to post whatever information you value, whether it be discriminatory or blatant lies. This leads to deliberate misinformation that many people will follow blindly. Media is known to be very one sided and people using media can easily create their own “online echo chambers”, where they surround themselves with people that only reflect their own views. In order to resolve this issue we need deeper fact checking and more independent journalism.

Almost all polls were wrong about the results of this election,
I think that the main reason for this is because many people were ashamed to be voting for Trump because after all the media has said about how Hillary is better and Trump is a racist, no one wanted to say that they wanted to vote for Trump in the polls. I personally think that even though Trump got a lot of media coverage, in the beginning and even towards the end, it was very negative. Hillary, however, got a lot of positive attention from the press. I think this comes from the fact most news companies are on the east and west coast, places that are very pro-Hillary. Donald Trump even said that the media is biased and one sided. Of course every company has their preferences however many would say it's suspicious that they all have the same preference.