Critical Approaches to Political Debates

With the current US Presidential debates taking over the news and Twitter, in class we took a look at how the media responds and influences the debate. 

In separate groups we all looked at different aspects, my group was given: 

Representation: consider the following 'The problem is engagement, attention and authenticity' 

In terms of attention the media represents Hillary Clinton as someone who is just there and almost quiet because she doesn't draw much attention to herself in a negative way and the media doesn't cover that as much because the public would rather see more of Trump's stupid comments. Trump is represented as the main attraction with more people talking about what Trump says than what Hillary says. This is because bad press circulates more than good therefore more people will talk negatively about Trump and his comments and beliefs; also Trump is very controversial with people agreeing and believing what he believes but more often than not he has more attraction because people just can't believe he, who is running for President, is saying. The media is not fair as they do not give as much attention to Clinton however when she had pneumonia they gave her a lot of coverage representing her as this weak person with people thinking she is an unsuitable candidate for POTUS. 

Engagement is huge for representation as the more people engage the more a person has an image that represents them. The main point about engagement is that with the amount of social media allows people to interact and engage with the candidates and the candidates will engage with each other, most of the time the things they say cause more spark and conversation because they probably shouldn't have said that. Engagement gives more attention as one person will tweet something and 10K retweets later people in other countries know what you think, people are very open about their opinions but aren't always as accepting of others' opinions. However recently, celebrities are using the media to try and get more people to vote in the upcoming election, they are making videos and sharing them on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to influence people. Some of these videos are impartial, some stating a personal reason why they think voting is important however one campaign - the Save the Day campaign - featured numerous actors telling people to vote but with a subliminal message of don't vote for Trump - is this right? They are people who are looked up to and they are trying to influence people's political opinions. 

Authenticity is a big part of representation and whether people believe then people they see or if they think they are putting up a front, if so they are less likely to agree or respect them as they will feel like they are being lied to. Donald Trump is someone who is very unpredictable, he has 2 phones that operate his social media, one by his team and one by himself and the difference between the tweets is very obvious. A question about whether Trump is who he seems (racist, sexist, homophobic etc.) when he talks in debates or tweets or whether that is his front as he knows that his controversial views will give him attention and an image and representation that people will know about. 

In conclusion, I believe these are not necessarily problems but what make up representation and it is what the media is given to work with and the type of person they are determines the type of representation a person has.