Following the US Capitol rebellion, Twitter permanently banned President Donald Trump’s account “due to the risk of further incitement to violence”.
Barred from using his favorite tool for public communication, Trump left behind 88 million followers, about 16,000 tweets now deleted while in the office and a legacy of spreading misinformation and distrust on the platform.
A CNBC analysis of Trump’s tweets during his presidency found that his most popular and frequent posts spread misinformation and distrust. Many of his most favorite tweets contained falsehoods, while the topic he most frequently posted about, “fake news”, was a weapon to undermine information.
“Trump’s main use of Twitter has been to spread propaganda and manipulate public opinion,” said Sam Woolley, director of advertising research at the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Media Engagement. “He used Twitter to delegitimize information or delegitimize his opponents’ positions.”
Of Trump’s 10 most popular tweets, four contained false claims related to the results of the 2020 elections. Of his 100 most popular posts, 36 contained falsehoods related to the election.
These 36 posts containing electoral falsehoods received a total of 22.6 million likes and 3.9 million retweets, according to the analysis, which used a historical record of Trump’s posts from the Trump Twitter Archive and excluded any retweets from different accounts from @realDonaldTrump.
“Since the November election, Trump has turned to Twitter as the main platform for spreading misinformation about the election,” said Woolley.
The House of Representatives is expected to accuse Trump on Wednesday afternoon for the second time. The Democratic-led House presented an impeachment article on Monday that cited Trump’s repeated false allegations of electoral fraud as evidence that he triggered a Capitol insurrection.
While the publication of falsehoods is a form of disinformation, Woolley said, Trump also practiced a less direct mechanism: attacks intended to delegitimize information. This is most visible in the use of Trump’s favorite phrase, “fake news”, which appeared about 900 times in his tweet story.
“Trump uses social media and terms like ‘fake news’ and ‘witch hunts’ and his power there to create the illusion of the popularity of ideas that are not really based on reality,” said Woolley. “Often, what this does is create a movement effect to support false or misleading things or, more generally, to attack institutions”, which can include health, science, education and government, in addition to the media.
The most common two-word phrases used in Trump’s tweets as president
1. Fake news
2. United States
3. Witch hunt
4. White House
5. Greater America
6. Full endorsement
7. New York
8. News from the media
9. Great job
10. Great again
The rise in social media misinformation by Trump and others has visible effects on U.S. democracy, said Kelly Born, executive director of Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center. She described widespread impacts, such as decreased confidence in institutions and more specific and tangible results, such as the multitude of Trump supporters who interrupted a joint session of Congress confirming Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
“There is no doubt that the [social media] platforms were used at all stages “of the riot, Born said,” from increasing tensions between these groups to worsening animosity to physical organization, with people talking about bringing ties and ropes and where to go and when. “
Woolley agreed that last week’s events show the power of Trump’s presence on the Internet outside of social media, explaining how the online and offline worlds are connected.
The Trump Twitter cycle followed a pattern now known throughout his presidency: Trump tweeted to millions of followers, who further spread the messages in his posts, which were then covered by the media and carried on in public speaking, giving Trump another opportunity to comment on your initial message.
“There were other Republicans and supporters who disagreed with what he was doing, saying to let him get what he wanted on Twitter, minimizing or ignoring it,” said Woolley. “With what we’ve seen in Washington in the past few days, we can no longer deny the fact that what Trump does and says online has serious consequences offline.”
Trump spoke publicly for the first time since the riot on Tuesday, but took no personal responsibility for the violence. In his comments, he used language similar to that seen in many of his tweets, calling the conversation impeachment “really a continuation of the biggest witch hunt in politics”.
In addition to how Trump used the tool, Born said that part of his legacy on Twitter is that his actions finally forced social media and technology platforms to take action against the type of content and behavior he promoted. Last week, Google and Facebook suspended or banned Trump from their platforms, Amazon withdrew cloud computing support from the social media application Parler due to violent content on the platform, and Twitter suspended more than 70,000 accounts associated with the theory of far-right QAnon conspiracy.
Because of the permanent suspension of Trump’s Twitter account, most of his tweets that have been incorporated into media stories over the years have disappeared, leaving a hole in the 45th president’s historical record. Private companies do not fit the rules of government agencies for preserving documents and communications for legal and historical research.
“These tweets will no longer be available to the public and this is not an institutional government account,” a Twitter spokesman told CNBC via email on Wednesday. “We have submitted preservation requirements to the White House and the National Archives and Records Administration. We will work with the government to help comply with its filing laws.”
The spokesman also noted that Politwoops preserves all deleted tweets.
– Marty Steinberg and Steve Kovach of CNBC contributed to this story.