Oh Snap: Chat Style in the 2016 US Presidential Primaries

Abstract

Based on Goffman’s theories of self-presentation and framing, this exploratory investigation adapted Videostyle and Webstyle protocols to analyse the 2016 US presidential primary candidates’ Snapchat posts. This quantitative content analysis ( N = 871) coded for the visual content, production techniques, nonverbal content and frames used by the five candidates who used Snapchat as a strategic tool to engage voters throughout the course of the 2016 US primary campaign. The results indicate Clinton (D) deviated from the other candidates in the visual and nonverbal content as well as the frames used in her snaps. The implications of these findings on gendered self-presentation theory as well as inferences about the campaigns’ strategic social media motivations and effectiveness are also explored.

The Digital Architectures of Social Media: Comparing Political Campaigning on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat in the 2016 U.S. Election

“…As explained in the paragraphs below, newcomers to Snapchat were difficult to identify, and for this reason, Trump’s account is not included in the analysis. However, another study (Al Nashmi & Painter, 2018) finds that over the same time period, the Trump campaign rarely posted Snapchat stories.…”

From archive cultures to ephemeral content, and back: Studying Instagram Stories with digital methods

“…Despite the common understanding of the Internet as 'never forgetting' (Mayer-Schönberger, 2009), ephemerality has become a central component of many social media platforms, such as 4Chan (Hagen, 2018), Snapchat (Nashmi and Painter, 2018), and Instagram (Vázquez-Herrero et al, 2019). All of these platforms provide affordances designed to allow the creation of content which disappears from users' view after a short period of time.…”

“…Existing research has looked at the diffusion of ephemeral content by focusing mostly on Snapchat. Attention has been paid not only to the content of ephemeral snaps (Nashmi and Painter, 2018;Roesner et al, 2014), but also to how the temporality afforded by the platform may influence and mediate users' subjectivities and interactions (Bayer et al, 2016), with a particular focus on the implications for selfpresentation (Koefed and Larson, 2016) and intimate relationships (Handyside and Ringrose, 2017). Moreover, these studies highlight that the ephemerality that the platform affords also allows for higher levels of users' self-disclosure (Bayer et al, 2016) and reduced self-presentational concerns, as compared to the more edited and permanent content posted on Instagram (Koefed and Larson, 2016).…”

“…In this context, the methodological strategies that are most often applied for the access, collection, analysis and archival of ephemeral content in the form of a 'story' rely on individuals' narrations and are collected through interviews and focus groups, often mixed with the observational analysis of online content. Yet, even when the focus is more centred on the content itself (Nashmi and Painter, 2018), current works largely avoid challenging the key issues of accessibility, epistemology and ethics that the study of this new means of communication entails.…”

Networked gift-giving: Ethno-religious minority youths’ negotiation of status and social ties in a society of distrust

“…content. This body of work has mainly focused on Snapchat as an idiosyncratic platform that limits persistence (e.g Nashmi & Painter, 2018;Handyside & Ringrose, 2017)…”