Independent Analysis
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Summary:
The Donald Trump Facebook (FB) political advertisement campaign from 2017-2020 have very interesting trends. Most notably, after the 2018 midterm elections in which the Republican party was unable to win a majority, use of FB as platform for targeted messaging dropped sharply. As the years progressed from 2017 to 2020, fewer and fewer messages had a collaborative tone between Donald Trump and House Republicans. In certain cases, some advertisements even ask the audience to try and convince their Republican representatives to fund the border wall. A recurring theme for their message is to use a lot of populist rhetoric to attack the "elites", "Fake News Media" (aka mainstream media), socialist agendas, and political opponents like Joe Biden, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, etc. Many messages are designed to trigger a sense of insecurity and fear of supposed intruders trying to enter the US to destabalize the country or accusing Liberal politicians of "Defund the Police" in the sense that it will bring chaos.
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Content creation tends to be reactive throughout the years, as they are designed to meet the immediate political needs of the Republican Party or Trump himself rather than propose a concrete plan. With the exception of the border wall, no other real concrete proposals were noted.
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Summary:
Joe Biden's Facebook (FB) political advertisements from 2018-2020 have two peaks of high activity. Notably, the 2019 Democratic Primaries where he was in contest with other candidates like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. The second peak of activity is the 2020 timeframe leading up to the Presidential Election against Donald Trump.
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Message types used between these timeframes are specifically designed for their respective audiences. 2018 had very few messages, but those that were sent were reminiscent of the Obama campaign's message of "Hope" and optimism. Moving into 2019, the tone of message take a more aggressive stance towards Donald Trump and repeatedly asks for campaign donations from the audience. The most common message is one that reaches out to the audience to take part in a survey in what issues they find important. 2020 is when the most aggressive and critical messages are being sent. There are many accusations of lies, corruption, recklessness, white supremacy, and fanning racial hatred against Trump.
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Interesting features to note are the content in Biden's messages and the wider diversity in emotional expression. Aside from the anger mentioned before, some messages mention nervousness and concern about Trump's performance, in addition to the initial hope and optimistic sentiments. Furthermore, Biden's messages also contain more numbers for comparison. Besides the requests for money and the numbers about how much money has been raised by whomever, there are many instances of numbers being used to describe campaign performance. For example, "We need 71 more responses from your area...", "Bernie Sanders is leading us by ONE point", and "Arizona: Trump 49, Biden 45".
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