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ABSTRACT
The 2020 election raised critical questions about how presidents can be held accountable for their public communication. This essay focuses on how the ubiquitous presidency’s drive for attention—illustrated most recently by former President Donald Trump during the campaign and transition—led agents such as Congress, technology platforms, and the public to quickly reassess how presidential communication can be contoured to diminish threats against a pluralist democracy. Building on the presidential accountability framework we develop in The Ubiquitous Presidency, we interrogate how the second impeachment, deplatforming, and defeat of Trump necessitate the communicative containment of, and attentional disengagement from, the president.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The Cline Center for Advanced Social Research at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has classified the events that occurred on January 6, 2021 as an attempted dissident coup. For more information, see The Cline Center, “It was an Attempted Coup: The Cline Center’s Coup D’état Project Categorizes the January 6, 2021 Assault on the US Capitol,” January 27, 2021, https://clinecenter.illinois.edu/coup-detat-project-cdp/statement_jan.27.2021.
2 Brian Fung, “Twitter Labeled Trump Tweets with a Fact Check for the First Time,” CNN, May 27, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/26/tech/twitter-trump-fact-check/index.html.
3 Joshua M. Scacco and Kevin Coe, The Ubiquitous Presidency: Presidential Communication and Digital Democracy in Tumultuous Times (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021).
4 “The Impeachment of Andrew Johnson,” United States Senate, https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Impeachment_Johnson.htm (accessed August 24, 2021).
5 “H.Res.24 – Impeaching Donald John Trump, President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors,” Congress.gov, https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-resolution/24/text (accessed August 24, 2021).
6 For transcript, see: “Trump Lawyer Michael van der Veen Closing Argument Transcript in 2nd Trump Impeachment,” Rev, February 13, 2021, https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/trump-lawyer-michael-van-der-veen-closing-argument-transcript-in-2nd-trump-impeachment.
7 Olivia Rubin, Alexander Mallin, and Alex Hosenball, “‘Because President Trump said to’: Over a Dozen Capitol Rioters Say They Were Following Trump’s Guidance,” ABC News, February 9, 2021, https://abcnews.go.com/US/president-trump-dozen-capitol-rioters-trumps-guidance/story?id=75757601.
8 See, for example George C. Edwards III, On Deaf Ears: The Limits of the Bully Pulpit (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003).
9 David Zarefsky, “Presidential Rhetoric and the Power of Definition,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 34, no. 3 (2004): 607–19, doi:10.1111/j.1741-5705.2004.00214.x; Mary E. Stuckey, “Rethinking the Rhetorical Presidency and Presidential Rhetoric,” Review of Communication 10, no. 1 (2010): 38–52, doi:10.1080/15358590903248744.
10 See Chapter 5 in Scacco and Coe, The Ubiquitous Presidency.
11 Ernest Luning, “Joe Neguse Argues Trump ‘Summoned, Assembled and Incited’ Mob that Stormed Capitol,” The Gazette, February 10, 2021, https://gazette.com/news/local/joe-neguse-argues-trump-summoned-assembled-and-incited-mob-that-stormed-capitol/article_43901451-c35c-5d53-9b50-55dd7bc3e398.html.
12 Fung, “Twitter Labeled Trump Tweets.”
13 Brian Stelter and Donie O’Sullivan, “Trump Tweets Threat that ‘Looting’ will Lead to ‘Shooting.’ Twitter Put a Warning Label on it,” CNN, May 29, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/29/tech/trump-twitter-minneapolis/index.html.
14 Donie O’Sullivan, “Twitter Puts Warning on Trump Tweet for ‘Threat of Harm’ Against DC Protesters,” CNN, June 23, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/23/tech/trump-twitter-violence-warning/index.html.
15 Allan Smith, “Twitter, Facebook Slap Warning Labels on Trump’s Posts on Voting Twice,” NBC News, September 3, 2020, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/twitter-facebook-slap-labels-trump-s-posts-voting-twice-n1239241; see also “Factbox: How Facebook, Twitter Differ on Labeling Trump’s Election Posts,” Reuters, November 4, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-elections-socialmedia-factbox/factbox-how-facebook-twitter-differ-on-labeling-trumps-election-posts-idUSKBN27K2TL.
16 Jon Levine, “That Time Broadcast Networks Declined to Air President Obama’s Primetime Immigration Speech in 2014,” The Wrap, January 8, 2019, https://www.thewrap.com/that-time-broadcast-networks-declined-to-air-president-obamas-primetime-immigration-speech-in-2014/.
17 For the series of policy tweets from Twitter on “newsworthiness,” see @Policy: https://twitter.com/Policy/status/912438362010783744.
18 Such journalistic norms are often weighed even more explicitly in traditional print media. See, for example Marisa Iati, “A Newspaper has a Novel Strategy for Covering One Politician’s Falsehoods: Don’t,” Washington Post, March 15, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2021/03/15/josh-mandel-newspaper-coverage/.
19 Mark MacCarthy, “The Facebook Oversight Board’s Failed Decision Distracts from Lasting Social Media Regulation,” Brookings Institution, May 11, 2021, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2021/05/11/the-facebook-oversight-boards-failed-decision-distracts-from-lasting-social-media-regulation/; see also Daniel Kreiss and Shannon McGregor, “Facebook’s Oversight Board Must Uphold the Ban on Trump,” Wired, March 1, 2021, https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-oversight-board-trump-ban/.
20 On “democratizing the internet,” see Victor Pickard and David Elliot Berman, “Biden’s Broadband Plan is a Good Start—but America Needs Guaranteed Broadband for All,” The Nation, May 21, 2021, https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/broadband-infrastructure-biden/.
21 Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter, What Americans Know about Politics and Why it Matters (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996).
22 Lilliana Mason, Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became our Identity (University of Chicago Press, 2018). See also Kathleen Donovan, Paul M. Kellstedt, Ellen M. Key, and Matthew J. Lebo, “Motivated Reasoning, Public Opinion, and Presidential Approval,” Political Behavior 42 (2020): 1201–21, doi:10.1007/s11109-019-09539-8.
23 Robert C. Luskin, “The Heavenly Public: What Would a Fully Informed Citizenry be Like?” in Michael B. MacKuen and George Rabinowitz (eds.), Electoral Democracy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), 238–61.
24 Michael M. Grynbaum, “Trump’s Briefings are a Ratings Hit. Should Networks Cover them Live?,” New York Times, March 25, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/25/business/media/trump-coronavirus-briefings-ratings.html.
25 “USF-Nielsen Sunshine State COVID-19 Survey: Governance & Policies,” May 12, 2020, https://www.usf.edu/arts-sciences/documents/sunshine-state-survey/covid-governance-policies-report.pdf.
26 Dustin P Calvillo, Bryan J. Ross, Ryan J. B. Garcia, Thomas J. Smelter, and Abraham M. Rutchick, “Political Ideology Predicts Perceptions of the Threat of COVID-19 (and Susceptibility to Fake News about It),” Social Psychological and Personality Science 11, no. 8, (2020): 1119–28, doi:10.1177%2F1948550620940539.
27 Joshua M. Scacco and Ashley Muddiman, “The Curiosity Effect: Information Seeking in the Contemporary News Environment,” New Media & Society 22, no. 3 (2020): 429–48, doi:10.1177%2F1461444819863408; Natalie Jomini Stroud, “Attention as a Valuable Resource,” Political Communication 34, no. 3 (2017): 479–89, doi:10.1080/10584609.2017.1330077.
28 Such a shift is complicated by the unfortunate reality that local news is a “troubled” genre, according to a Federal Communication Commission (FCC) working group, and has deteriorated amid, among other factors, budget cuts and partisan ownership. For the FCC report, see: Steven Waldman and The Working Group on Information Needs of Communities, “The Information Needs of Communities: The Changing Media Landscape in a Broadband Age,” Federal Communication Commission, July 2011, www.fcc.gov/infoneedsreport. For partisan ownership issues, see, for example, Dylan Matthews, “Sinclair, the Pro-Trump, Conservative Company Taking Over Local News, Explained,” Vox, April 3, 2018, https://www.vox.com/2018/4/3/17180020/sinclair-broadcast-group-conservative-trump-david-smith-local-news-tv-affiliate. For budgeting issues, see: Mason Walker, “U.S. newsroom employment has fallen 26% since 2008,” Pew Research Center, July 13, 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/20/u-s-newsroom-employment-has-dropped-by-a-quarter-since-2008. For some emergent efforts to reinvigorate local news, see, for example, David Plotz, “The Future is Local: That’s Why I’m Launching City Cast, a Network of Daily Local Podcasts,” Medium, October 19, 2020, https://medium.com/@davidplotz_89250/the-future-is-local-thats-why-i-m-launching-city-cast-a-network-of-daily-local-podcasts-2537bc9b0773. See, as well, research from the Center for Media Engagement focused on the information needs of local communities, as well as solutions to local news challenges: Center for Media Engagement, modified 2021, https://mediaengagement.org/.
29 Sara Fischer and Neal Rothschild, “America Rebalances its Post-Trump News Diet,” Axios, March 7, 2021, https://www.axios.com/politics-media-trump-biden-e423fd1f-f239-4581-9338-32d514977d3d.html.
30 For a broader discussion of these other agents of accountability, see Chapter 6 in Scacco and Coe, The Ubiquitous Presidency.
31 Ariana Pekary, “CNN Public Editor: How CNN Amplifies Social Media Misinformation,” Columbia Journalism Review, March 10, 2021, https://www.cjr.org/public_editor/cnn-public-editor-how-cnn-amplifies-social-media-misinformation.php.