David Robinson has been analyzing Trump tweets. For example:
A number of different people have clearly tweeted for the \@realDonaldTrump account over time, forming a sort of geological strata. I’d divide it into basically five acts:
- Early days: All of Trump’s tweets until late 2011 came from the Web Client.
- Other platforms: There was then a burst of tweets from TweetDeck and TwitLonger Beta, but these disappeared. Some exploration (shown later) indicate these may have been used by publicists promoting his book, though some (like this one from TweetDeck) clearly either came from him or were dictated.
- Starting the Android: Trump’s first tweet from the Android was in February 2013, and it quickly became his main device.
- Campaign: The iPhone was introduced only when Trump announced his campaign by 2015. It was clearly used by one or more of his staff, because by the end of the campaign it made up a majority of the tweets coming from the account. (There was also an iPad used occasionally, which was lumped with several other platforms into the “Other” category). The iPhone reduced its activity after the election and before the inauguration.
- Trump’s switch to iPhone: Trump’s last Android tweet was on March 25th, 2017, and a few days later Trump’s staff confirmed he’d switched to using an iPhone.
Which devices did Trump use himself, and which did other people use to tweet for him? To answer this, we could consider that Trump almost never uses hashtags, pictures or links in his tweets. Thus, the percentage of tweets containing one of those features is a proxy for how much others are tweeting for him.
Topics covered:
- When did Trump start talking about Barack Obama?
- Changes in words since the election
- What words lead to retweets?
Includes the usual charts and graphs, and code for those who want to play around.
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