"Trump Won Because He Understood the Digital is Real" - Top Anthropologist on How to Study the President-Elect's Online Following

"Trump won because he understood the digital is real," writes Tom Boellstorff in a provocative post on Culture Digitally, an NSF-funded blog. A Professor of Anthropology at UC Irvine and a pioneer in the study of virtual communities (the author of Coming of Age in Second Life, and full disclosure, a friend), Boellstorff argues it this way:

That’s not the only reason he succeeded, but it’s a pivotal factor and one with pivotal lessons for all of us whose scholarship, advocacy, and activism involves digital culture. I remain shocked by how many scholars counterpose the “digital” to “real life” or the “real world.” ... Opposing the digital to the real might seem useful as a way to claim relevance or tangible impact. But Trump saw that it is precisely in its reality that the digital is useful, relevant, impactful. Trump was “real” to voters when he was digital, and knew it.

Tom points in particular to Trump's supporters in the online alt-right subcommunity, from where many pro-Trump, anti-Hillary memes spread throughout social media first emerged. His advice for colleagues who want to study them?

“First, I think it’s very important to explore how what Trump’s followers are doing online is real, or not real, and how they are understanding what counts as 'real' in the first place," Tom tells me. "We see this, for instance, in debates over offensive images and memes and claims it is just a joke. What we want to avoid is assuming that because what someone is doing online means it’s not real (and on the flip side, that because what someone is doing offline means it is real)."

That includes in-person (so to speak) research:

“[A]s an anthropologist I would encourage researchers to incorporate not only interviews but participant observation into their online methods. Data analytics and other quantitative methods are extremely important," he says. "No one method is the best: all have something to contribute. But particularly with regard to the 2016 election, quantitative methods have been of limited effectiveness in isolation. (For a great discussion of this, see this post by Tom Ewing, as flagged by Cory Doctorow).

"Interviews are useful to be sure, but because what people say they do isn’t the same as what they actually do, fieldwork has a powerful rule to play. If the goal is to study Trump’s online followers, then get out there—and by 'out there' I mean wherever his followers are online, and hang out. Get to know the lay of the land, the debates, the activities, the interactions. The things people are saying and the things left unsaid because taken for granted as 'common sense.' It is that 'common sense' that we dearly need to better understand."

More thoughts from Tom here.

Image: Trump's Second Life avatar.

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Comments

[jar]

Yeah. Just like saying JFK won because he knew TV better than Nixon.

All Trump new was that he could reach the racist and the hateful by simply being racist and hateful himself on Twitter.

Once again, the Techies never really understood what they create and they don't care as long as it makes money. Hope what you like coming your way, techies.

[JohnC]

I think statements like this credit the man with far to much intelligent forethought than there could have possibly been. If there is any truth in it, it happened by pure accident. The simplicity of it was you had a realist and a fantasist. Christmas is on the way and you had one side saying, "We will do our best but it's going to be a hard journey if we are going to make it fair for everyone". And then you had the other side saying "I am going to do everything you ever dreamed of, and I am going to do it very fast so that it's still time to have a fantastic Christmas a super new year" without a single mention of any difficulty at all in doing all these amazing things. Is there any surprise at all that even those who didn't believe a word of it, still thought it sounded like the better option.

[melponeme_k]

Trump won because our industrial and farming areas are dying. There were millions of regular Americans going into debt due to lack of jobs, using credit to make ends meet and suffering the rapaciousness of an industrial medical conglomeration.

Trump gave all these people a voice. In fact I think he is the lesser evil. Considering that someone a heck of a lot scarier could have taken the reins of this discontent.

If you don't think we narrowly avoided disaster and forestalled a civil war dispute, look at the map that voted for Trump. Look who voted for Clinton. Ask yourself, who would fall in a siege. Who can be blockaded and starved out. It wouldn't be the states that voted for Trump.

Far too many people have voted for little things that don't matter in the grand scheme. Women screaming over who touched them where are small potatoes compared to the changing political winds due to an emerging China as a power block upending the status quo.

[JohnC]

You talk like some massive majority won this election, only just over half the country voted, and of that half, in real numbers, just slightly more voted democrat. It was in fact a 50 50 split. This is more or less what happened in Uk with the Brexit vote. We call this democracy, and to the credit of most people on both sides of these impossibly black and white decisions, they try to make it work, even when the result has resounding bad effects on them. Your statement "women screaming over who touched them" is super dumb and disrespectful of women, and taken with your other damning statements about female celebrities, only serves to highlight your own inner hangups. Melponeme the muse of tragedy, how appropriate

[melponeme_k]

The majority won this election. Look at the maps county by county. RED, RED everywhere except the major cities. There is no 50/50 split. The machines were rigged to begin with to shave off Trump's lead and they still couldn't get Clinton into office.

"Your statement "women screaming over who touched them" is super dumb and disrespectful of women,"

That is what Hillary Clinton turned this election into, screaming women. Women they dug up out of whatever hole they found them in to complain against Trump 15 years after the fact. But also blithely ignoring the very severe accusations of abuse against her husband and herself.

OH what Cher, the great social warrior. The social warrior who NEVER protested the Vietnam War? Guess it would have gotten in the way of fittings for her Mackie gowns and plastic surgery procedures. Talk about self hatred. She epitomizes minority women in entertainment ever ongoing crusade to look more white. Cher doesn't represent me, and I am FULL Native American unlike her.

[Sylvie Jeanjacquot]

terrified; good luck

[SanityPlease]

@ melponeme_k

Couldn't agree more well said.

It's amazing that so many liberals (regressives really) think half the country voted Trump in because they are sexist and racist. They are so out of touch with the world they can live with that profound leap of fiction.

Despite an entirely bias media and political establishment, Trump won and won hard, cutting through endless lies and emotionalism.

[Shockwave yareach]

Give me a break. Im willing to bet more people voted for Vermin Supreme than are in SL today. And trump himself has said he doesnt use a computer at all. I am pretty sure the first step in understanding digital is to actually have access to the digital realm...

[JohnC]

Just looked up the definition of Liberal
"willing to respect or accept behavior or opinions different from one's own; open to new ideas."
I would be more than happy with that label. Not quite sure how it can be used as a derogatory term for anyone though.
BTW I would ignore me, I am from England so my thoughts upon American politics are pretty meaningless, and I sometimes say things just to get a reaction from people who are easily lead.

[Ciaran Laval]

Tom's right, as he usually is. I can't remember who said it, but a journalist said that they had not seen this election result coming and had missed a massive story, the story of why this has happened I assume.

A couple of Guardian journalists have been trying to find out why, Gary Younge here :

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/09/electing-donald-trump-democracy-us-politics

John Harris here :

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/10/donald-trump-brexit-us

They both talked to people, this doesn't mean they agree with them of course.

I'm still bemused as to how someone with so little political experience can end up as president, his lack of political experience would have been a showstopper for me before any of his hate and vitriol had even crossed my eyes.

[Tizzy Canucci]

Politics is won with campaigns, not policies. Trump might not understand the digital, and I suspect his campaign team didn't care whether it was called digital, telephonic or door knocking. They did what works today, which is the feeding of social media with what people want to hear. They'd watched Brexit and how the pumping of mistruths worked there. Academics and commentators call it digital, but that's just a label.

[Violet]

You guys are funny--- especially the non voting and non Americans- Every vote for every candidate was for a different reason- sorry you can not know what people were or were not thinking when they filled in the circle---you just can't---attempts to salvage or exult your world view is just that-- yours alone-- Now let's get on with business and worry about what really matters--- Linden Labs extreme land prices--- lack of access to connecting sims unless your an insider-----