Carole McGranahan's Research on Trump and Twitter in A&S Magazine
Carole McGranahan's research on Trump and Twitter featured in Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine.
Carole McGranahan, professor of cultural anthropology at the 勛圖厙 of Colorado Boulder, may not be a soothsayer, but just months into Donald J. Trumps presidential term, she warned that his rhetoric, amplified by the social media platform Twitter, might result in not just division, but outright violence.
Trumps well-documented penchant for lying, she argued, was creating affiliative truths, alternate realities around which people were building communities.
The sociality of lies brings people together, but in so doing, distances others, she wrote in , published in the May 2017 issue of American Ethnologist. Af麍liative truths need not always be violent. But when they mark others as fearsome, af麍liation to groups can bring violence. Is this the future of Trumps America? Will such lie-fueled violence become normalized?
Fast forward to the burgeoning days of 2021. For more than two months, Trump has refused to acknowledge that he lost the Nov. 3 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden and, he has continually stirred up supporters with claimsmostly on Twitterthat the election was stolen. His attorneys have filed more than 60 lawsuits protesting various aspects of the election; all but one conceding a minor point were summarily dismissed.泭