Clinton Era Ends, Social Media Rises in Politics
End of the Clinton Era in Politics Guest: Russell Riley, PhD, Associate Professor at the Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia, Co-Chair of the Presidential Oral History Program, Author of “Inside the Clinton White House: An Oral History” The Washington Post noted this week that Donald Trump took down two dynasties in “disposing first of Jeb Bush and then Hillary Clinton” on his way to winning the White House. If, as many suspect, the Clinton era in politics is now over, what legacy do Bill and Hillary leave behind? Did they change American politics or the White House in any lasting way? Did their twenty-plus years in the public eye contribute to Hillary’s defeat? What effect have the Clintons had on political partisanship and the way Americans feel about government? Social Media’s Influence on US Elections Guest: Richard Davis, PhD, Professor of Political Science, BYU, Co-Editor of “Twitter and Elections Around the World”; Leticia Bode, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication, Culture, and Technology, Georgetown University Wind the clock back eight years and you’ll recall one of the big stories of Barack Obama’s election was how his campaign harnessed the power of social media to raise money and get out the vote. Twitter and Facebook were still fairly new. At the time, Obama had a 112-thousand Twitter followers which impressed a lot of people. That’s pretty quaint when you look at the 14 million followers Donald Trump has on Twitter and Hillary Clinton’s 11 million. (Obama now has 79 million Twitter followers.) Did social media help Donald Trump win the election? Did journalists underestimate Trump because they were too comfortably ensconced in the political echo chamber of their own Twitter feeds? Did viral fake news stories and ugly exchanges on Facebook exacerbate the divisiveness of the election? Or, was 2016 a triumph for social media as a force to energize and inform voters?