Social media played a huge part in this year’s US election and President-elect Donald Trump has absolutely no doubt it was Facebook and Twitter that gave him an edge in his win over Hillary Clinton.
Over the weekend, the Republican paid a visit to CBS’s 60 Minutes where he had a chance to discuss in more detial his recent presidential triumph as well as his ambitions as the next president of the US with host Lesley Stahl – and a big portion of the show focused on his savvy use of social media.
Trump was outspoken about leveraging his social media influence in his presidential campaign, pointing out that platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram “helped [him] win all of these races where [the Democrats were] spending much more money.”
He further added that his massive social media following essentially enabled him to mobilize his resources much more efficiently:
The fact that I have such power in terms of numbers with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, et cetera… I think that social media has more power than the money [Clinton’s campaign team] spent, and I think maybe to a certain extent, I proved that.
Trump emphasized that, at present, he has over 28 million supporters across various platforms and his following keeps growing. “I think I picked up yesterday 100,000 people.”
The president-elect also said that social media is “a great form of communication” when it comes to fending off inaccurate accusations from media.
I have a method of fighting back… [w]hen you [the media] give me a bad story or when you give me an inaccurate story.
Last week, the victorious Republican candidate took it to Twitter to complain about “professional protestors” rioting against his triumph.
Just had a very open and successful presidential election. Now professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting. Very unfair!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 11, 2016
However, the ex-reality show star said he plans to scale down on his use of platforms like Facebook and Instagram once he steps into the White House.
Although “there’s nothing [to be] ashamed off” when it comes to using social media, Trump claimed he’ll take a much more “restrained” approach on such platforms in the future. Let’s see how this pans out.
Meanwhile, Facebook has been getting a lot of flack for possibly swaying electoral support in favor of Trump. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has since denied the the accusations, downplaying such claims as “unlikely” and “crazy.”
via The Verge
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