On Friday, September 16th, Donald Trump announced that “President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period”. He believed it was finally time to put the issue to rest by claiming that presidential nominee Hillary Clinton started the birtherism movement during her 2008 political campaign.
However, multiple news sources, including Politifact, have shown that it was a Clinton supporter and not Hillary Clinton herself who started the rumors about President Obama’s birthplace.
Donald Trump’s statement caused quite the uproar on Twitter with people either standing behind him or disavowing him completely. Searches for posts containing Trump and birtherism, and Hillary and birtherism found a total of 45,240 posts, 42,135 of which were tweets.
As the above image shows, there were some noticeable spikes in the number of tweets – one at 12pm for Donald Trump and one at 7pm for Hillary Clinton. The number of posts begin to taper off after 7pm with only a few minor spikes on September 18th.
There were mixed feelings about Donald Trump’s statement with most people outraged by his statement, while others were in full support.
Also, conversation clouds revealed specific words used in association with birtherism and both political candidates.
Both conversation clouds show that birtherism, lies, and started are the key words being used in social media posts.
It is interesting to note that in the Trump conversation cloud #imwithher, which is used primarily by Hillary supporters, shows up. This could be a result of Hillary supporters ending mentions of Trump and birtherism with #imwithher.
Also, the Hillary conversation cloud includes words such as racist and vile. Again, it is not clear as to what context these words are being used. They could be used by Trump supporters describing Hillary or vice versa.
Supporters and opponents of both presidential candidates had a lot to say about Donald Trump’s birther statement. While sentiment is difficult to track, the software did pick up on more negative tweets about Trump and birtherism. One thing to note is that there was not much mention of Hillary’s response on Twitter, which could contribute to the lack of positive tweets.
The use of social media throughout this presidential campaign reveals it is a powerful tool in informing voters and arming candidates with the tools to respond directly to claims made by the media and other candidates.
