The results are still trickling in, state-by-state, but the overall outcome is clear. Four years after he was kicked out of the White House, and accused of launching an “attempted coup” in an angry response to the electorate rejecting him, Donald Trump will be the 47th US president after sweeping both the popular vote and electoral college.
In his acceptance speech in West Palm Beach, Florida, Trump took time to praise two key figures in the alternative media space: podcaster Joe Rogan and social media owner Elon Musk. The mentions of the two entrepreneurs highlighted how important Trump thought they were to his re-election bid.
But is he correct?
“It is impossible to know what real impact things like Trump’s appearance on Rogan’s podcast truly made,” said Steven Buckley, a lecturer in digital media sociology at City, University of London, who specialises in US politics. But it seems like it didn’t harm things for a mercurial, countercultural campaigner like Trump.
Buckley believes that not embracing alternative sources of media in the way Trump did harmed the Harris campaign. She “clearly should have done more media hits in both traditional and alternative spaces,” he said.
“I believe Trump’s campaign were less afraid of these alternative media spaces and realised that not only did the free-wheeling, less restrictive nature benefit Trump and his surrogates, but that traditional media would often cover these appearances anyway.”
It’s clear that social media played a big part in the election – and the support of Elon Musk. The owner of X called the site “the de facto public town square” in 2022 when he launched his takeover bid.
Trump was welcomed back onto X after Musk bought it for $44bn (£34bn) in October 2022. In recent weeks Musk, who has campaigned personally for Trump, appeared ubiquitous in users’ timelines – something that might not have been possible had he not had absolute control of the platform.
Trump also chose a digital advertising strategy that appealed to his base of supporters on X, leaving spending on other platforms to be dominated by the Kamala Harris campaign – a strategy that didn’t work for his defeated opponent.
Republican-leaning advertisers were six out of the 10 biggest advertisers on X so far this year, according to data compiled by FWIW News at the start of November. The campaign’s @TeamTrump account on X spent nearly $1m (£776,000) reaching would-be voters.
Within X, there’s a belief that the platform played an integral part in Trump’s election for the second time, one employee told i. “Look at the messages Elon has been putting out there overnight,” said the employee, who spoke under the condition of anonymity. “He’s pointed to X being the signal of public opinion and how it has replaced media.”
One post reads: “You are the media now.”
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1854045379408326909
That presentation of X and other social and non-traditional forms of media as replacing, and in opposition to, the traditional media is notable.
So too is the idea that Trump somehow ran an unconventional campaign, as many commentators have put it, in choosing to target podcasters and his base on social media.
“It’s interesting that traditional media is calling Trump’s comms strategy as unconventional,” said Buckley. “It’s only unconventional in their eyes, but I think to voters Trump’s strategy seemed very normal, reasonable and expected.”
The former and future president knew he had to energise his base in order to win enough seats to assure victory, and focused on that, even while his in-person speeches were sometimes poorly attended.
Yet the clipped-up depictions of the events played well on social media. And with 43 per cent of Americans telling the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism that they avoid news in one way or another, social and alternative media was where they got their information.
Yet despite the importance of Musk, Rogan and the alternative media space that has cropped up – including Trump’s own Truth Social social network – to help promote an alternative view of reality (or the honest view for Trump’s supporters), traditional media still played its role.
The uproar over the Washington Post‘s decision not to endorse a candidate demonstrates its perceived influence. An unprecedented 250,000 of the newspaper’s two million subscribers cancelled after Jeff Bezos, the Amazon owner who bought it in 2013, reportedly intervened to stop the board endorsing Harris. Exactly why is unclear. Bezos said it was about restoring trust in the media, while sceptics believe he is another tech billionaire running scared of Trump.
But Trump found a way to use traditional media to his advantage, telling a rally before the election: “The Washington Post and the LA Times, they’re not endorsing anybody. You know what they are really saying? They are saying this Democrat is no good and they think I’m doing a great job. They just don’t want to say it.”
Lachlan Murdoch, who has sole control of the Fox and News Corp businesses since taking over from his father Rupert, has released financials showing record political advertising across the Fox network. Americans returned to traditional TV news as the tight election race generated more interest.
The country’s leading cable news channel, averaging 1.6 million viewers a day throughout October, helped promote Trump as a viable contender for the presidential election, even as he decried the television channel for not doing enough to support his campaign.
With Fox News watched by political independents, as well as Republican voters, Harris sat down with host Bret Baier for an interview.
And CNN, another traditional media outlet, was the platform for the first and only televised debate between Trump and Joe Biden that ultimately prompted the party to switch candidates for this election. The comparatively last-minute replacement was triggered by Biden’s poor performance on traditional media.
Yet there’s no denying that the balance of power has shifted. In a society where anyone can get whatever view of the world they agree with, no matter how detached from reality it may be in some cases, the importance of a single, mainstream voice becomes less important. Or as Fox News’s Baier put it a little after 2am local time this morning: “Maybe it’s the future? It’s Elon Musk. It’s Joe Rogan and podcasts.”
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