In an election cycle that was anything but typical, social media — especially the two social-media giants, Facebook and Twitter — played an outsized role.
From tweeting about sex tapes at 3 a.m. to posting photos of a taco bowl to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, Donald Trump utilized social-media platforms to dominate the daily news cycle — and to circumvent a mainstream media he often found unfriendly. However, it may have been Hillary Clinton who used the tools most effectively.
Clinton’s account garnered more interactions — likes, comments, and shares — than Trump’s, and she penned the most re-tweeted tweet of the election.
Her “Delete your account” tweet, responding to Trump’s tweet about President Obama’s endorsing Clinton, earned over half a million re-tweets. She also earned 101,000 re-tweets after her campaign staffer was live-tweeting the presidential debate and sarcastically wrote, “‘I never said that.’ — Donald Trump, who said that,” with a link to Trump’s 2012 tweet on global warming being a Chinese hoax. Ironically, that 2012 tweet soon became Trump’s third most re-tweeted posts of the election, with 98,000 re-tweets.
