From boots on the ground to followers in the sky: Volunteer mobilization and populist rhetoric in the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Donald Trump

Abstract

The article analyzes the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Donald Trump, with particular focus on their respective uses of the internet and social media communication in mobilizing voters and volunteers and using their way of connecting with voters to emphazise their legitimacy as anti-elitist candidates. In his 2008 campaign, Obama set the precedent for using online strategies to build and support a national movement within the framework of the Democratic Party, Trump, an outsider in the GOP, took the strategy a step further and used social media as his primary tool of voter communication and mobilization with only emphasized his populist message. In their use of online campaigns, both Trump and Obama relied in populism rhetorical tools, though from different sides of the political spectrum, adding to contemporary debates of the nature and purpose of populism in the twenty-first century. However, in both candidates’ campaigns mobilization of volunteers through their respective national movement became symbols of their populist appeals,.