The general election for President of the United States is 14 months away and leading figures in the Democratic Party are vying for their party’s nomination. Former Vice President Joe Biden is currently the frontrunner in the race, and as such is the recipient of much attention in the media. Biden remains popular largely from his long history in politics and notably his position in the Obama administration, but nonetheless receives criticism from members of his own party.
Joe Biden’s attention in the media warrants the need to explore the discussion about him on the internet. I took a sample of #Biden tweets in a span of time beginning in August and extending into early September. During this time Biden was campaigning throughout the country along with many other Democratic politicians, particularly in the state of Iowa. I studied over 100 tweets and examined the stance, expected political leanings of the writer, the focus of the tweet and the rhetorical appeal used.
The #Biden tweets in the sample that I used for my study were chosen randomly. I filtered out all Tweets containing "RT" so I would not see a repeat of "retweeted" Tweets, allowing me to see only original content published by Twitter users.
Stance of #Biden Tweets
I began my research by looking at how the tweets considered Joe Biden. I found that almost 70 percent of the tweets I examined had a negative opinion of Joe Biden, coming from twitter users across the political spectrum. Many tweets suggested that Joe Biden is not the preferred choice for the Democratic nominee, many others stated that Trump should serve another term as president. Nearly 23 percent of tweets did not display a stance toward Joe Biden. These tweets would be publications of poll results, announcing an event that happened in the news concerning Joe Biden, or not have a clear message. Less than 10 percent of the tweets I examined had something positive to say about Biden.
Another category I examined was the expected political leanings of #Biden tweeters. I had expected to find a similar proportion of conservative leaning Twitter users as there had been for tweets against Joe Biden but this was not true. Many tweets that seemed to come from liberal minded Twitter users discussed their dislike for Joe Biden and a preference for a different party nominee.
Two very common references in these tweets were Joe Biden’s mental health and his recent false war story he told about traveling to Afghanistan. Most of these tweets did not take on a political stance but seemed to aim toward illustrating Biden’s faults and inaccuracies.
Focus and Appeals of Tweets
I analyzed the focus of the tweets in my study, looking at other hashtags included with #Biden as well as the main talking points. Tweets mocked Biden as being a “clown,” “gropey,” “unelectable,” and “insane.” Over 25 percent of tweets examined mentioned Joe Biden’s mental abilities in some capacity.
Biden is the Pete Best of American politics, the guy who never quite made it. Except Pete Best wasn’t a gropey, senile, corrupt Democrat plagiarist with delusions of adequacy. https://t.co/FhLWDxYqbz
— Jazcox (@jaz2cox) September 1, 2019
My analysis found that nearly half of the tweets I examined relied on the rhetorical appeal of pathos, as may be expected for a political subject. The majority of these tweets did not reference any facts that could be used in support or opposition of Joe Biden and were purely emotional arguments.
Summary
I found the results of my study to show a mostly negative portrayal of Joe Biden, whether the tweets came from liberal, moderate, or conservative leaning Twitter users. If Joe Biden hopes to be the Democrat’s presidential nominee, he will need to show that he is mentally capable and a truthful individual.