Trump and his supporters have long trafficked and profited from misinformation and conspiracy theories to their advantage, building visibility on social media platforms and shaping the national conversation. During his first term, Trump was famous for announcing the administration’s position and priorities through tweets. In the years since, social media platforms have become friendlier environments for conspiracy theories and those who promote them, helping them spread more widely. Trump’s playbook has adjusted accordingly.
Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, says that social media, particularly the right-wing social media ecosystem, is no longer a way for Trump to control the conversation and public perception. He says the administration is now actively making decisions and shaping policy based primarily on how they will be perceived online. Their priority is what right-wing communities care about—even if it is anecdotal.
WIRED spoke to Moynihan, who argues that America has entered a new level of interaction between the Internet and politics, what he calls “clicktatorship.”
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Wired: To start, what is “clicktattership”?
Don Moynihan: “Clicktattership” is a form of government that combines a social media worldview with authoritarian tendencies. This means that people acting in this form of government are not only using online platforms as a means of communication, but their beliefs, judgments, and decision-making abilities reflect, influence, and are directly responsive to the online world to a great extent. “Clicktattership” looks at everything as content, including basic policy decisions and implementation practices.
The supply of a platform that encourages right-wing conspiracies and an administration’s demand for those who can traffic in those conspiracies is what is giving us the current moment of “clicktattership” that we are experiencing.
“Clicktattership” is generating these images to justify the occupation of American cities by military forces, or to justify cutting resources to states that do not support the president, doing things that would have literally shocked us a decade ago.
Trump’s first presidency was characterized by a kind of showmanship. How is this different from what we are seeing now?
The first Trump presidency can be understood as a “TV presidency”, where viewing learner Or Fox News gave you a real sense of the environment in which Trump was operating. The second Trump presidency is the “Truth Social or X presidency,” where it is much harder to interpret without the reference points of those online platforms. Some of the content and messages used by the President or other senior policy makers are filled with inside references, with the message making no sense unless you are already in that online community.
The methods of communication have also changed. We are seeing very senior policy makers exhibiting patterns and habits that work online. Pam Bondy, going into a Senate hearing with a list of zingers and printed ex-posts as a means of responding to the traditional accountability process, demonstrates how this online mode of discourse is shaping how public officials view their real-life roles.
There has been a lot of research about the polarizing and harmful nature of social media. What does it mean that our political leaders are people who have not only succeeded in manipulating social media, but have themselves been manipulated by it?
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