{"id":177,"date":"2016-11-18T00:46:24","date_gmt":"2016-11-18T00:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.electionanalysis2016.us\/?page_id=177"},"modified":"2016-11-18T16:27:30","modified_gmt":"2016-11-18T16:27:30","slug":"trying-to-avoid-trump-a-canadian-experience","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2016\/us-election-analysis-2016\/section-5-overseas\/trying-to-avoid-trump-a-canadian-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"Trying to avoid Trump: a Canadian experience"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"row \"><\/p>\n<p><div class=\"col-lg-3 col-md-3 col-xs-12 col-sm-3\">\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-503\" src=\"http:\/\/www.electionanalysis2016.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Alex_Marland_photo-bw-300x300.png\" alt=\"alex_marland_photo-bw\" width=\"227\" height=\"227\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Alex_Marland_photo-bw-300x300.png 300w, https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Alex_Marland_photo-bw-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Alex_Marland_photo-bw-60x60.png 60w, https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Alex_Marland_photo-bw.png 453w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 227px) 100vw, 227px\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"ProfileText5\">\n<p class=\"BIO\"><strong><span class=\"CharOverride-35\">Dr Alex Marland\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"BIO\"><em>Associate Professor of Political Science at Memorial University of Newfoundland and\u00a0author of Brand Command: Canadian Politics and Democracy in the Age of Message Control (UBC Press, 2016)<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"BIO\"><span class=\"EMAIL\">Email: amarland@mun.ca<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-257\" src=\"http:\/\/www.electionanalysis2016.us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/US2016-Section-5-300x300.png\" alt=\"US2016 - Section 5\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/US2016-Section-5-300x300.png 300w, https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/US2016-Section-5-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/US2016-Section-5-768x770.png 768w, https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/US2016-Section-5.png 1022w, https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/US2016-Section-5-60x60.png 60w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<h5 class=\"CampaignQuote5\">Section 5: Overseas Perspectives<\/h5>\n<div class=\"page-list\"><ul class=\"list-group-item\"><li class=\"page_item page-item-169\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2016\/us-election-analysis-2016\/section-5-overseas\/media-coverage-of-the-us-election-in-arabic-chinese-and-russian-media\/\">Media coverage of the US election in Arabic, Chinese, and Russian media<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"page_item page-item-171\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2016\/us-election-analysis-2016\/section-5-overseas\/us-presidential-campaign-2016-in-a-metaphorical-mirror-of-the-russian-media\/\">US Presidential campaign 2016 in a metaphorical mirror of the Russian media<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"page_item page-item-173\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2016\/us-election-analysis-2016\/section-5-overseas\/the-greek-perspective\/\">The Greek perspective<\/a><\/li>\n<li class=\"page_item page-item-175\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2016\/us-election-analysis-2016\/section-5-overseas\/the-richest-slovenian-son-in-law-the-slovenian-perspective\/\">The richest Slovenian son-in-law: the Slovenian perspective<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul><\/div>\n<p><\/div><\/p>\n<p><div class=\"col-lg-9 col-md-9 col-xs-12 col-sm-9\"><\/p>\n<p class=\"FIRST-PARA\">Unlike other contributors, I tried to\u00a0<span class=\"ITALIC\">a<\/span><span class=\"CharOverride-20\">vo<\/span><span class=\"ITALIC\">id<\/span>\u00a0media exposure to the 2016 US election campaign. My reasoning for this unstructured social experiment? I was ineligible to vote, I live in Canada, I study Canadian politics, I am busy. I would loosely simulate the floating voters who pay little attention to politics, and who take information shortcuts to form basic impressions about leaders. My non-representative sample of one constitutes something of a control to illustrate the omnipresence of the campaign and captivation with the demagoguery of Donald Trump.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Basic-Paragraph-US\"><span class=\"REGULAR\">I live in North America\u2019s easternmost city, St. John\u2019s. I also spend time in a tiny rural community, population 110 on Sundays before the church closed down. My media consumption was a strict diet of small portions of Canadian news television, local Newfoundland radio, and Canadian news websites and email listserves. I watched bits of the debates, and had some brief exposure to American networks ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CNN. I did not use social media or a smartphone, and avoided conversation with others about the topic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Basic-Paragraph-US\"><span class=\"REGULAR\">Here are my observations as I tried to avoid Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Basic-Paragraph-US\">During the primaries, Trump\u2019s use of Instagram showed how an inexpensive controlled mechanism can build a political brand. His posts were information subsidies for the global media \u2013 free content that is accessible and easy to reuse. Provocative remarks and lewd behaviour fed an appetite for dramatic storytelling. Critics\u2019 ensuing outrage was delicious theatre of heroes and villains. Forget public policy: this was a never-ending story arc involving public personas, with audiences drawn to part soap opera, part sports contest. As Trump\u2019s celebrity and underdog story grew, American politics became infotainment on an international scale. By the time he accepted the Republican nomination, Canadian news had spotted a ratings winner, analogous to the escapades of Rob Ford, Toronto\u2019s infamous crack-smoking mayor (on this, see Duncan Koerber\u2019s 2014\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cjc-online.ca\/index.php\/journal\/article\/view\/2766\/2457\"><span class=\"Hyperlink\">article\u00a0<\/span><\/a>about crisis communication in the\u00a0<span class=\"ITALIC\">Canadian Journal of Communication<\/span>). It became impossible to avoid Trump because everyone wanted to talk about the shocking behaviour of a populist who eschews conventional wisdom.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Basic-Paragraph-US\"><span class=\"REGULAR\">It was soon a norm to evoke Trump in every social setting. Posters at Memorial University advertised public talks, ranging from a \u201cTrump and Tacos\u201d politics event to an English professor evoking Trumpian literary analogies. At a talk to discuss my book about Canadian political communication, the first questions were about Trump. At a staff meeting, an apolitical woman confessed interest in the election, explaining \u201cit makes me feel dirty.\u201d People with no post-secondary education in households that are otherwise interested only in local Newfoundland news became glued to CNN, watching late into the night. As Election Day neared, the Canadian Television Network\u2019s news channel and website featured a digital countdown. The St. John\u2019s chapter of Equal Voice, an organization that seeks to elect Canadian women, hosted an election night event. On the morning of November 9, St. John\u2019s CBC radio uncharacteristically held a local call-in show about the results.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Basic-Paragraph-US\"><span class=\"REGULAR\">As with Ford, the tone of Canadian news and the public sphere was a mixture of perplexity, anxiety, morbid fascination and, above all, classism. Pollsters relayed that Canadians overwhelmingly preferred Hillary Clinton. Americans would want to relocate to Canada in the event of a Trump victory and realtors were on standby. A website urged citizens to move to Cape Breton, an island in Atlantic Canada. After the vote was in, the Canadian immigration website crashed. There is both smugness and relief about Canada being led by Justin Trudeau, the dashing Liberal prime minister. Meanwhile, Conservative Party leadership contestant Kellie Leitch is\u00a0<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.macleans.ca\/politics\/ottawa\/kellie-leitch-latches-on-to-trump-victory\/\"><span class=\"Hyperlink\">grabbing headlines<\/span><\/a><span class=\"REGULAR\">\u00a0by evoking Trump as she rallies against Canadian elites and calls for immigrants to be screened for Canadian values.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Basic-Paragraph-US\"><span class=\"REGULAR\">Why were so many Canadians caught up in the American election? The globalization of news and communications technology is one explanation. Beat reporters have become multitaskers operating in a digital-first, mobile-first environment. In Newfoundland newsrooms, journalists stare at computer screens and smartphones, chasing whatever is trending on social media. Content comes in from Toronto and digital information subsidies constitute clickbait. Canadian coverage of American politics constricted attention that might otherwise have been directed at resolving local issues, or perhaps Hurricane Matthew which in early October caused mass destruction and deaths in Haiti.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Basic-Paragraph-US\"><span class=\"REGULAR\">My take-away is that a vote for Trump was likely a vote against elites concentrated in urban centres who are perceived as promoting metropolitan righteousness and who frown upon rural citizens. Social activists\u2019 moral condemnation of a plain-speaking populist stirred anger against an establishment seen to be advancing a politically correct orthodoxy. More broadly, Canadians and others should question the implications of a global media system that displaces coverage of local public policy and human disasters in the developing world in favour of infotainment originating from major media centres.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":32,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-177","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Trying to avoid Trump: a Canadian experience - US Election Analysis 2016<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2016\/us-election-analysis-2016\/section-5-overseas\/trying-to-avoid-trump-a-canadian-experience\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Trying to avoid Trump: a Canadian experience - 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