As part of the Illuminating 2016 project, I wrote a blog post on Donald Trump negative campaign strategies in the US Presidential race. There is a public perception that Trump’s campaign is overly negative, often intolerant and even extreme. That might be true, but, as our analysis demonstrates, he’s not the only one to blame. In fact, in certain moments of this campaign, his opponents have been attacking more. Our preliminary observations demonstrate how important it is to put candidates into perspective and compare campaign strategies over time to understand digital campaigns.
We also looked at the focus of Trump’s attacks. Is he more concerned with attacking his opponents character, values, and personal traits? Can we expect deeper policy discussions coming out of these attacks?