{"id":795,"date":"2024-11-11T17:34:20","date_gmt":"2024-11-11T17:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/?page_id=795"},"modified":"2024-11-15T15:30:43","modified_gmt":"2024-11-15T15:30:43","slug":"wooing-the-manosphere-hes-just-a-bro-donald-trumps-2024-digital-transactions-with-dude-social-media-influencers","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2024\/section-7-popular-culture\/wooing-the-manosphere-hes-just-a-bro-donald-trumps-2024-digital-transactions-with-dude-social-media-influencers\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWooing the manosphere: He\u2018s just a bro.\u201d Donald Trump’s 2024 digital transactions with \u2018dude\u2019 social media influencers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n

Prof. Mark Wheeler<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professor of Political Communications at London Metropolitan University. He teaches and researches on media, information technologies and politics. He has authored Politics and the Mass Media<\/em> (Blackwells, 1997), Hollywood: Politics and Society<\/em> (BFI, 2006), Celebrity Politics<\/em> (Polity, 2013) and Sorcerer: William Friedkin and the New Hollywood<\/em>  (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022). He has written journal articles and book chapters concerning social media and political communications, celebrity politics and the politics of Hollywood. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Email: <\/em>m.wheeler@londonmet.ac.uk<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

U.S. Election 2024<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

78. Momentum is a meme<\/a> (Prof Ryan M. Milner)
79. Partisan memes and how they were perceived in the 2024 U.S. presidential election<\/a> (Dr Prateekshit \u201cKanu\u201d Pandey, Dr Daniel Lane)
80. The intersection of misogyny, race, and political memes... America has a long way to go, baby!<\/a> (Dr Gabriel B. Tait)
81. Needs Musk: Trump turns to the manosphere<\/a> (Dr Michael Higgins, Prof Angela Smith)
82. \u201cWooing the manosphere: He\u2019s just a bro.\u201d Donald Trump\u2019s digital transactions with \"dude\" influencers<\/a> (Prof Mark Wheeler)
83. Star supporters<\/a> (Prof John Street)
84. Pet sounds: Celebrity, meme culture and political messaging in the music of election 2024<\/a> (Dr Adam Behr)
85. The stars came out for the 2024 election. Did it make a difference?<\/a> (Mark Turner)
86. Podcasting as presidential campaign outreach<\/a> (Ava Kalinauskas, Dr Rodney Taveira)
87. Value of TV debates reduced during Trump era<\/a> (Prof Richard Thomas, Dr Matthew Wall)
88. America\u2019s \u201cfun aunt\u201d: How gendered stereotypes can shape perceptions of women candidates<\/a> (Dr Caroline Leicht)<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n

In the 2024 Presidential campaign, Donald Trump\u2019s winning 2.0 strategy of\u00a0\u00a0\u201ctransgression as entertainment\u201d<\/a>\u00a0was evident in his decision to target a disaffected demographic of largely young white male voters (the \u201cmanosphere<\/a>\u201d) within the key swing states. Instead of appearing on legacy news channels designed to challenge\u00a0him including Cable News Network (CNN<\/em>) or Microsoft National Broadcasting Corporation (MSNBC<\/em>) (or even on his conventional media mogul \u201cally\u201d Rupert Murdoch\u2019s right-wing Fox News Network (FNN<\/em>)), Trump reached out online to attract the so-called \u201cbro\u201d vote. As such, he appeared on several \u201cDude\u201d or \u201cGen-Alpha\u201d social media influencers\u2019 podcasts. These included: the US\u2019s most popular podcaster Joe Rogan; Theo Von\u2019s show, a right-wing comedian; the internet pranksters \u2013 the Nelk Boys founded by\u00a0Kyle Forgeard and Jesse Sebastiani; the YouTube site of brothers Logan and Jake Paul;\u00a0Lex Fridman\u2019s platform, a\u00a0Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) affiliated computer scientist,\u00a0and the online channels of live gamer Adin Ross.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With 14.5 million Spotify followers and 17.5 million YouTube subscribers, the Joe Rogan Experience (JRE) has a vast, mostly young male, audience. For Trump the three-hour interview on the JRE<\/a> represented his most significant online engagement. Although Rogan had supported progressive Democratic Party Senator Bernie Sanders and, in 2022, had declared Trump as an existential threat to democracy, he and the Republican Party\u2019s nominee vibed on their mutual friendship with the \u201csuper bro\u201d Elon Musk and their love of the mixed-martial arts Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). In the JRE podcast, a typically rambling Trump was allowed by Rogan to renew his personal attacks on his opponent Kamala Harris\u2019s IQ, to blame Covid-19 on allowing the Democrats to steal the 2020 election, to make unchecked anti-immigrant rants, to accuse his ex-Chief of Staff John Kelly of being \u201cdisloyal\u201d and to accuse his former hawkish International Security spokesperson John Bolton of being an \u201cidiot\u201d. An enthusiastic Rogan concluded that interviewing Trump was fun, the Republicans were now the punk rock rebels and the liberals were censors whose cancel culture undermined freedom of speech. A beaming Trump responded by stating that it was the \u201cwoke\u201d elites who came after their political opponents like third-world dictators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier in the campaign, on Von\u2019s \u201cThe Past Weekend\u201d podcast<\/a>, Trump strayed into more personal territory when he talked about the death of his older, alcoholic brother Fred Trump Junior.  The pair of \u201chomies\u201d went on to discuss the nature of addiction, the comparative differences between drinking and use of cocaine, and Trump\u2019s life-long sobriety. Trump flattered his host when he appeared with the part-time wrestler Logan Paul on his \u201cImpaulsive\u201d podcast by informing the YouTube personality that Paul was 18-year-old Barron\u2019s (Trump\u2019s youngest son) favorite social media influencer. In tandem, The Nelk Boys were reported to be spearheading a voter registration drive that they hoped would be attractive to Trump\u2019s fellow-travelers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, when appearing on Ross\u2019s show, Trump admitted that he had only just come to terms with the possibilities of livestreaming  on social media. Although he appreciated that the podcast was part of a \u201cnew wave\u201d of information dissemination, Trump again maintained  that it was Barron who had advised him to seek out Ross. Ross responded by putting aside his usual misogynistic rants and replacing them with a series of toned-down references focusing on Trump\u2019s foreign and immigration policies. Finally, the host presented Trump with a Rolex watch and both men then occupied a descaled Tesla cyber truck manufactured by Trump\u2019s most vocal supporter, the tech billionaire, Elon Musk. Inside the vehicle there was a picture of the ex-property tycoon standing in defiance of his July assassination attempt, along with patriotic images of a US bald eagle and an American flag. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So Trump in his 2024 Presidential campaign embraced the often contrarian, testosterone-filled cyberspaces<\/a> established by these conservative influencers on live streaming platforms including Twitch, Kick, YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. His use of podcasts demonstrated how as a celebrity \u201coutsider\u201d Trump could utilize his Make America Great Again (MAGA) grassroots image as  a \u201cblue-collar billionaire\u201d<\/a> to manipulate the attitudes of a mainly apolitical set of white male voters. Trump\u2019s dialogues with adoring male social media influencers suggest that a new phase of apparent \u201cauthenticity\u201d has emerged in the era of online political advertising and marketing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In reality, Trump\u2019s \u201cimpression management\u201d<\/a> of his parasocial image masked a further race to the bottom wherein the tame questions provided by Rogan et.al gave him a \u201cfree pass\u201d rather than any proper scrutiny. The allure of Trump\u2019s maverick outsider status to these podcasters has serious implications for the provision of any pluralistic forms of American political content and turbo charges Trump\u2019s claims towards plutocratic power. Through the social media influencers\u2019 false ideological \u201cdiscourse\u201d there were major distortions of information with toxic post-truths embedded into the US body politic. And so, on the eve of the election, Rogan happily endorsed Trump.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prof. Mark Wheeler Professor of Political Communications at London Metropolitan University. He teaches and researches on media, information technologies and politics. He has authored Politics and the Mass Media (Blackwells, 1997), Hollywood: Politics and Society (BFI, 2006), Celebrity Politics (Polity, 2013) and Sorcerer: William Friedkin and the New Hollywood  (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022). He has written journal articles and book chapters concerning social […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":1019,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-795","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cWooing the manosphere: He\u2018s just a bro.\u201d Donald Trump's 2024 digital transactions with \u2018dude\u2019 social media influencers - Election Analysis - United States<\/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\/president2024\/section-7-popular-culture\/wooing-the-manosphere-hes-just-a-bro-donald-trumps-2024-digital-transactions-with-dude-social-media-influencers\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u201cWooing the manosphere: He\u2018s just a bro.\u201d Donald Trump's 2024 digital transactions with \u2018dude\u2019 social media influencers - Election Analysis - United States\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Prof. Mark Wheeler Professor of Political Communications at London Metropolitan University. 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