US ADMINISTRATION’S USE OF STRATEGIC POLITICAL COMMUNICATION ON TWITTER FOR PROMOTING “DEAL OF THE CENTURY” رسالة ماجستير

Abstract

In recent years, Twitter use in political communication has become a trend that has been given an exceptional attention by researchers from different disciplines. In the United States of America, Twitter was intensively used by Donald Trump in his 2016 presidential elections campaign and later on by the US administration. The main research problem of this study stems from the lack of understanding of strategic communication and persuasion techniques used by the US Administration in promoting the most recent policies and political projects, mainly the “Deal of the Century” and its consequent events including normalization agreements with some Arab countries. Moreover, there is a lack of understanding among the Palestinian official institutions involved in political communication of the mechanisms of using strategic political communication on Twitter during the study timeframe, which is provided in depth in this study. This study investigated the use of strategic communication and persuasion techniques on Twitter by US administration under Trump, in promoting the deal and its consequent events. Theoretically, it tackled with the message characteristics of the related administration’s tweets, in addition to the use of the 7 persuasive techniques introduced by the Institute of Propaganda Analysis (IPA). The study used both quantitative and qualitative content analysis of a selected sample of 161 tweets from the US administration and its representative’s accounts from 1 January, 2020 to 1 January, 2021. The content analysis of the message structure of the sample tweets showed that the majority of these tweets included one-sided messages, whose purpose is to gain the audience support VI for the deal and normalization agreements. With regard to the message content, the content analysis demonstrated that the US administration mostly used positive emotional appeal rather than evidence. In very few tweets, they used testimonials and interesting content as evidence to make the message more persuasive. Furthermore, the content analysis of the message style demonstrated that strong emotion-laden words were used intensively to evoke in the audience the emotions that such words may raise. Moreover, the metaphor rhetorical device was used to persuade the audience by associating unknown ideas with known ones, thus intensifying the effect on them. As for the use of the IPA 7 techniques, 6 were mostly used in the sample tweets with card stacking and glittering generalities being the techniques used most frequently.