Salvador Gómez-García, Valladolid (Spain)
Alicia Gil-Torres, Valladolid (Spain)
Keywords
Political communication, Donald Trump, quantitative analysis, infotainment, mobile apps, mobile devices, entertainment industries, Google Play
Abstract
This paper explores the creation and content of apps about Donald Trump (n=412) published in Google Play between June 2015 and January 2018. The relevance of the study stems from both its objectives and its methodology. On the one hand, the aim was to characterise the profile, motivations and purposes of the developers of Donald Trump apps; and on the other, to identify the main features of the discourses in the most downloaded apps. The study relied on two resources: a qualitative questionnaire of open questions for developers (n=376), and a quantitative analysis of the content of apps that exceeded 5,000 downloads (n=117). The questionnaire identified the influence of political current affairs in the developers’ ideological and economic motivations, while the content analysis revealed the trends found over time, as well as the themes, discourses and ideological positioning of the most popular apps about Donald Trump. The findings provide an empirical basis for how the content of these apps was articulated with the news; the influence of content that went viral; hegemonic discourses; and the role played by developers of new expressive, commercial, informative and persuasive proposals in the intersection between mobile apps and political campaigns.
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Technical information
Received: 20-09-2018
Revised: 12-11-2018
Accepted: 15-11-2018
OnlineFirst: 15-02-2019
Publication date: 01-04-2019
Article revision time: 53 days | Average time revision issue 59: 48 days
Article acceptance time: 56 days | Average time of acceptance issue 59: 98 days
Preprint editing time: 148 days | Average editing time preprint issue 59: 178 days
Article editing time: 193 days | Average editing time issue 59: 223 days
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How to cite
Gómez-García, S., Gil-Torres, A., Carrillo-Vera, J., & Navarro-Sierra, N. (2019). Constructing Donald Trump: Mobile apps in the political discourse about the President of the United States. [Creando a Donald Trump: Las apps en el discurso político sobre el presidente de Estados Unidos]. Comunicar, 59, 49-59. https://doi.org/10.3916/C59-2019-05