When U.S. President Donald Trump called the press the “enemy of the American people” and “FAKE NEWS” in a February 2017 tweet, his statement inspired a robust debate about the credibility, institutional norms, and national significance of the press, which were debated on social media by both journalists and non-journalists using the popular hashtag #NotTheEnemy. Because previous research suggests that elite discourse of “fake news” decreases public trust in the press, this tweet presented a unique danger to the journalistic paradigm and public trust in American journalism. Through a mixed-method approach combining quantitative content analysis and qualitative textual analysis, this research explores the major themes and dominant sentiments of this public discourse about the press and analyzes #NotTheEnemy’s contributions to reinforcing the journalistic paradigm in the wake of the president’s attack and its impact on American public opinion of and trust in the media.
CITATION STYLE
Whipple, K. N., & Shermak, J. L. (2020). The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Tweet: How #NotTheEnemy Twitter Discourse Defended the Journalistic Paradigm. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 97(1), 188–210. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077699019851755
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