Following the uproar of the U.S. Capitol, Twitter permanently banned President Donald Trump’s account “because of the risk of further incitement to violence.”
Blocked from using his favorite tool for public communication, Trump left behind 88 million followers, some 16,000 tweets now deleted while in office and a legacy of information dissemination and distrust of the platform.
A CNBC analysis of Trump’s tweets during his presidency found that his most popular and frequent posts spread widespread misinformation and mistrust. Many of his favorite tweets contained falsehoods, while the topic he posted most frequently, “fake news,” was a weapon to undermine information.
“Trump’s main use of Twitter for Twitter has been to spread propaganda and manipulate public opinion,” said Sam Woolley, director of propaganda research at the University of Texas at the Austin Media Application Center. “He used Twitter to delegitimize information or delegitimize the positions of his opponents.”
Of Trump’s ten most popular tweets, four contained false statements related to the 2020 election results. Of his 100 most popular posts, 36 contained election-related falsehoods.
Those 36 posts that contained election falsities received 22.6 million collective likes and 3.9 million retweets, according to the analysis, which used a historical record of Trump’s posts from Trump’s Twitter archive and excluded any retweets of accounts other than @realDonaldTrump.
“Since the November election, Trump has become Twitter as the basic platform for spreading information about the election,” Woolley said.
The House of Representatives is expected to challenge Trump by Wednesday afternoon for the second time. The Democratic-led House on Monday filed a dismissal article citing Trump’s repeated false allegations of election fraud as evidence that ignited the insurgency at the Capitol.
While publishing falsehoods is a form of misinformation, Woolley said, Trump also practiced a less direct mechanism: attacks aimed at delegitimizing information. This is most visible in the use of Trump’s favorite phrase, “fake news,” which appeared about 900 times throughout his tweet history.
“Trump uses social media and terms like‘ fake news ’and‘ witch hunt ’and his power there to create the illusion of popularity for ideas that actually have no basis in reality,” Woolley said. . “Often what this does is create a chariot effect to support false or misleading things or, more generally, to attack institutions,” which may include health care, science, education, and government, in addition to the media.
The most common two-word phrases used in Trump’s tweets as president
1. False news
2. United States
3. Witch hunt
4. White House
5. Fantastic America
6. Total endorsement
7. New York
8. Media
9. Great job
10. Great again
The rise in misinformation on social media by Trump and others has visible effects on U.S. democracy, said Kelly Born, executive director of Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center. He described major impacts, such as declining confidence in institutions, and more specific tangible results, such as the crowd of Trump supporters who interrupted a joint session of Congress confirming Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
“There is no doubt that [social media] The platforms were used in every step “of the riot,” Born said, “from rising tensions between these groups to the actual exacerbation of animosity to physical organization, with people who talk about wearing suspenders and ropes and where to go and when. “
Woolley agreed that last week’s events show the power of Trump’s offline presence on social media, explaining how the online and offline worlds are connected.
Trump’s Twitter cycle followed a pattern already known throughout his presidency: Trump tweeted to millions of followers, who further spread the messages of his posts, which were later covered in the media. and they pushed more into public discourse, giving Trump another chance to comment on his initial message.
“There have been other Republicans and supporters who discount what he does, saying let him have his stuff on Twitter, minimizing or ignoring it,” Woolley said. “With what we’ve seen in Washington in recent days, we can no longer deny the fact that what Trump does and says online has serious offline consequences.”
Trump spoke publicly for the first time since Tuesday’s riot, but did not take personal responsibility for the violence. In his comments, he used language similar to what was seen in many of his tweets, and said the dismissal talk was “really a continuation of the biggest witch hunt in politics.”
In addition to how Trump used the tool, Born said part of his Twitter legacy is that his actions eventually forced social media and technology platforms to take action against the kind of content and behavior he promoted. Last week, Google and Facebook suspended or banned Trump from their platforms, Amazon withdrew cloud computing support from the Parler social networking app due to the platform’s violent content, and Twitter suspended more than 70,000 accounts associated with the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory. .
Due to the permanent suspension of Twitter from Trump’s account, most of his tweets that were embedded in media stories over the years have disappeared, leaving a hole in the 45th president’s historical record. Private companies are not subject to the rules for government agencies to keep documents and communications for historical and legal research.
“These tweets will no longer be available to the public and this is not an institutional government account,” a Twitter spokesman told CNBC via email on Wednesday. “We are referring to the White House and the National Archives and Records Administration on preservation requirements. We will work with the government to help comply with its archiving laws.”
The spokesman also noted that Politwoops retains all deleted tweets.
– CNBC’s Marty Steinberg and Steve Kovach contributed to this story.