Political discourse against democracy. Trump's populism, bias and fallacy after the US elections (3-N)

Abstract

The Capitol riot and the impeachment process against Donald Trump, after the US elections (3-N), reopen the debate of the Rhetoric power in political discourse. A leader not subject to rules imposes the language of disinformation and populism as the axis of the story. Twitter becomes a tool for the delegitimization of institutions, through a message that harangues the masses to mobilize. The main objective of the study is to learn about Trump's themes and his discursive strategies on Twitter, aimed to denouncing the conspiracy and fraud of the electoral results. We applied a triangulated content analysis methodology based on the use of keywords (15,365) on a general sample of tweets (721) published by the president from the day after the elections until the proclamation of Joe Biden as president-elect of the United States. The advancement of results highlights the influence of the leader, ahead of governments and parties, the power of a simple and subliminal language, the personal bias of winner or victim and an unprecedented capacity to produce fallacies on Twitter. The effects of Trump's lie on the social audience require joint actions by institutions, the media and social platforms that guarantee the future of democracy.