27, July 2026

Rhetoric, Reality, and the Digital Bully Pulpit: Analyzing Donald Trump’s Alternative Media Strategy and its Institutional Implications

VOLUME-10; ISSUE-7; JULY-2026

Author(s): Prof. Ramesh Chandra Pathak

Authors Affiliations:

School of Media and Communication Studies
D.Y. Patil International University, Pune, Maharashtra, India

 

DOIs:10.2017/IJRCS/202607006     |     Paper ID: IJRCS202607006


Abstract
Keywords
Cite this Article/Paper as
References
The last few years in American politics have turned all that on its head with Donald Trump. The Trump media policy was designed to provoke a direct feud between the traditional institutional journalism and traditional corporate news organizations. A comprehensive and precise analysis of how and why Trump's alternative media campaign works and the legacy of the deep structures. This paper is not about style, but rather proposes an institutional evaluation of the communication system grounded in three processes: rhetorical activation of the ‘fake news’ paradigm as an epistemic defense device, direct and frequent communication with the public through social media and the complete subtraction of the traditional gatekeepers of the journalistic system. This paper, which is rooted in media populism and in the literature on the digital agenda-setting theory and political economy of the modern attention market, demonstrates Trump's highly profitable and co-dependent relationship with the institutions he verbally attacked. The analysis concludes that this model of media has been able to effectively decentralise political power, hasten the fragmentation of the public information ecosystem, institutionalise irreconcilable data echo chamber and provide an operating manual for current-day populist political players globally. This paper looks at these systematic changes and the structural consequences for democratic accountability, self-regulation of the media and the public trust in journalism.
Donald Trump, Media Policy, Political Communication, Populism, Social Media, Agenda-Setting, Attention Economy, Public Sphere.

Prof. Ramesh Chandra Pathak (2026); Rhetoric, Reality, and the Digital Bully Pulpit: Analyzing Donald Trump’s Alternative Media Strategy and its Institutional Implications, International Journal of Research Culture Society,    ISSN(O): 2456-6683,  Volume – 10,   Issue –  7,  Available on – https://ijrcs.org/

Bennett, W. L., & Pfetsch, B. (2018). Rethinking political communication in a time of disrupted public spheres. Journal of Communication, 68(2), 243-253.

Bucy, E. P., Foley, J. M., Lukito, J., Jaekel, M., & Shah, D. V. (2020). Performing populism: Trump’s transgressive communication style and the role of Twitter. Political Communication, 37(3), 335-358.

Chadwick, A. (2017). The hybrid media system: Politics and power (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press.

Habermas, J. (1989). The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. MIT Press.

Hameleers, M., Bos, L., & de Vreese, C. H. (2017). ‘They did it’: The effects of emotionalized blame attribution in populist communication. Communication Research, 46(6), 770-800.

McCombs, M. E., & Shaw, D. L. (1972). The agenda-setting function of mass media. Public Opinion Quarterly, 36(2), 176-187.

Mudde, C. (2004). The populist zeitgeist. Government and Opposition, 39(4), 541-563.

Neesham, C., & Dibben, M. (2020). The marketization of public discourse: Attention economy and political truth. Journal of Business Ethics, 165(3), 415-430.

Ott, B. L. (2017). The age of Twitter: Donald J. Trump and the politics of outrage. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 34(1), 59-68.

Pfiffner, J. P. (2018). The lies of Donald Trump: A challenge to democratic governance. Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 21(4), 677-700.

Shoemaker, P. J., & Vos, T. P. (2009). Gatekeeping theory. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203931653

Stroud, N. J. (2011). Niche news: The politics of news choice. Oxford University Press.

Van Aelst, P., Theeten, E., & Walgrave, S. (2020). How Donald Trump captured the media agenda: An empirical analysis of Twitter and news coverage. International Journal of Press/Politics, 25(4), 564-585.

Waisbord, S. (2018). The elective affinity between post-truth communication and populist politics. Communication Research and Practice, 4(1), 17-34.

Zuboff, S. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. PublicAffairs.

Post Views: 4

Download Full Paper

Download PDF No. of Downloads:0 | No. of Views: 3