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Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks onstage at the Ms. Foundation for Women 2017 Gloria Awards Gala & After Party in New York City in May. A recent University of Edinburgh study showed Clinton was three times as likely to be criticized than praised on Twitter in the days leading up to the 2016 presidential election.(Photo: Monica Schipper)

In a recent Twitter tirade, President Trump declaredhe won the presidency no thanks to the news, but through "interviews, speeches and social media."

On the last point, it appears Trump may be right. A study of viral tweets in the run-up to the presidential election showed posts favoring him nearly doubled that of challenger Hillary Clinton, who was three times as likely to be criticized than praised on Twitter in the campaign's final days .

The University of Edinburgh research analyzed the 50 most viral election tweets for each of the final 68 days of the 2016 presidential campaign Sept. 1 through Nov. 8. The researchers divided the tweets into pro-Clinton and pro-Trump categories and delved into theuse of slogans, mentions of swing states and the credibility of linked news sources.

Nearly two-thirds of the 3,450 viral tweets which were retweeted about 26 million times either attackedClinton (39%) or supported Trump (23%). The other third either supported Clinton (14%) or attacked Trump (19%).

Using tweets, researchers framethe narratives and strategies of both campaigns, which include tweets by Stephen King and Jerry Springer.

Here's what else the study found:

On Sept. 26, 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump leave the stage after the first presidential debate at Hofstra University in Hempstead, New York.(Photo: TIMOTHY A. CLARY, AFP/Getty Images)

Most of the viral tweets came from the candidates themselves. Clinton more often criticized Trump than she praised herself.

Clinton sent 331 positive tweets about herself and 363 that attacked Trump in the campaign's final weeks. Meanwhile, Trump boasted about himself 446 times and slammed Clinton 246 times ahead of Election Day.

"This suggests that Clinton expended more energy attacking her opponent than promoting herself, while Trump did the exact opposite," the study said.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Tallahassee in October 2016.(Photo: Evan Vucci, AP)

The president got more bang for his buck with his attacks.

Despite being fewer, his attacks earned more retweets than Clinton's. His posts of self-flattery also had more reach.

NIkkiUsher, anassociate professor in George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs, said this speaksto the lack of enthusiasm around the Clinton campaign. On the other hand, Trump "nailed it," she said, posting tweets bearing all the characteristics of virality:Highly spreadable, emotionally charged statements that resonate.

On about 85% of the days, Trump-friendly tweets were retweeted more than those favoring Clinton.

Still, there weretimeswhen pro-Clinton tweets came out on top: The day after the first debate and after the release of a tape showingTrump making sexual comments about women on Access Hollywood.

This illustrates Trump supporters' consistent enthusiasm for their candidate, "regardless to what happens," said lead researcher Walid Magdy of Edinburgh's School ofInformatics.

"It was clear from the data how Trump supporters were more dedicated to this campaign compared to Clinton's, who seemed to have many of them supporting her because of hating Trump rather than loving her," he said.

However, Usher cautioned people shouldn't look too deep into the Twitter favor. Twitter, she said, "is not an appropriate stand-in for humanity."

Fake Twitter accounts known as "bots"can influence virality, she said.Twitter also tends to amplifyconversations among "elites" such as celebrities, entertainers, politiciansand journalists. As a result, such public figures have an outsized presence on the platform

"It's one piece of an overall puzzle of what people are saying about politics or anything else for that matter," she said.

Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, speaks to the media from the balcony of the Embassy Of Ecuador on May 19, 2017 in London, England.(Photo: Jack Taylor, Getty Images)

Among the attacks on Clinton, the ones related to Wikileaks disclosures proved to be the most pervasive on Twitter.

"Wikileaks" was among the top terms used in Clinton attacks along with "crooked," "FBI" and "#DrainTheSwamp." The top three most retweeted Clinton attack tweets were all from the Wikileaks account.

As for Trump, his debate performance was most often the target of ridiculue followed by sexual misconduct accusations.

Among the most retweeted Trump attacktweets was this one from novelist Stephen King: "My newest horror story: Once upon a time there was a man named Donald Trump and he ran for president. Some people wanted him to win."

Pro-Clinton tweets more often came with links to legitimate news websites. The opposite was true of pro-Trump tweets.

The study found a "significantly higher proportion of highly credible websites were linked to" in pro-Clinton tweets.

"The opposite was true for the "support Trump" category, where the majority of links used to support Trump was from mixed credibility websites," the study said.

However, Wikileaks, which has high credibility, according to the study, was the top source used to attack Clinton.

(Photo: 1998 photo by Anne Ryan, USA TODAY)

The most retweeted tweet supporting Clinton came from former talk show host Jerry Springer, whose midday talk show often broke out into raucous brawls.

"Hillary Clinton belongs in the White House. Donald Trump belongs on my show," received nearly 79,000 retweets.

The most retweeted pro-Trumptweet came from him on Election Day.

"TODAY WE MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" he wrote on Nov. 8, earning about 352,000 retweets.

The Edinburgh research will be presented at the Social Informatics 2017 conference in September.

Follow Sean Rossman on Twitter: @SeanRossman

Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2uVs3Wa

See original here:
Hillary Clinton lost the presidential Twitter war, study shows - USA TODAY

They were obsessed: ABC, CBS, NBC evening news shows have been dominated by one subject this week: Donald J. Trump Jr.s 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower a meeting in which apparently no favors, money or meaningful information was exchanged, writes analyst Geoffrey Dickens, in a new study for Newsbusters.org, a conservative press watchdog.

In the past four nights, the Big Three networks devoted over 62 minutes of airtime to Mr. Trumps story he said, after tabulating the content of the coverage.

But those same news sources all but ignored Hillary Clintons Russia-Uranium scandal two years ago the analyst noted.

The total airtime for this subject amounted to a grand total of three minutes during the entire two-year period, Mr. Dickens found.

He recalls that Peter Schweizer author of the 2015 book Clinton Cash broke the story that a Canadian uranium company, seeking approval of a sale to the Russian government from then-Secretary of State Clintons State Department, had donated millions to the Clinton Foundation.

At the time, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was considered the favorite to win the Democratic nomination but the networks couldnt care less, Mr. Dickens noted in his analysis.

In just four nights the networks have swamped their evening news shows, he said, adding, that the Donald Trump Jr. coverage was 20 times more than what was devoted to the Clinton Foundation uranium deal.

See more here:
Broadcasters obsess over Trump Jr., ignore 'Hillary Clinton's Russia-Uranium scandal' study says - Washington Times

Mitt Romney / Getty

BY: David Rutz July 13, 2017 1:04 pm

Former Hillary Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon tweeted Wednesday that Democrats "erred" in their mocking of Mitt Romney in 2012 for calling Russia the nation's top geopolitical foe.

Fallon posted a tweet linking to a clip of Max Boot, who advised Romney on foreign policy in 2012, sparring with Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Wednesday evening. Boot criticized Carlson for being too soft on Russian President Vladimir Putin, which retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters also did on Carlson's show this week.

"Bravo @MaxBootfor calling out Putin lovers in Trump's GOP. We Dems erred in '12 by mocking Boot/Romney Russia worry," Fallon wrote.

Fallon, now a CNN commentator, served as the national press secretary for Clinton's presidential campaign in 2016.

Romney, the Republican nominee running against then-President Barack Obama, said in 2012 that Russia was "our No. 1 geopolitical foe." Obama's campaign and many members of the press derided the comments, with Obama himself quipping in a debate that "the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back."

"The Cold War's been over for 20 years," Obama said.

The media praised Obama's comment as a strong remark against Romney at the time.

Democrats have changed their tune on Russia since the U.S. intelligence community stated that the Kremlin was behind meddling in the 2016 election to try to help Donald Trump win the White House. The Russia investigation has dominated headlines throughout the Trump administration, with a sprawling investigation ongoing into whether the Trump campaign illegally colluded with Russian entities to affect the election.

See original here:
Fmr. Hillary Clinton Spokesman: Democrats Wrong in 2012 to Mock Romney's Russia Worries - Washington Free Beacon

The Rev. Jesse Jackson said defeated 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton really won the election against Republican President Donald Trump last November and that it was stolen.

Jackson made his remarks Thursday during a labor breakfast at the annual conference of his organization, the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, in Chicago.

Here are Jacksons words in context beforeintroducing Tom Perez, head of the Democratic National Committee:

To have a head of our party who is sensitive to the plight of working people is the order of this day, Jackson said. Dont forget when you lose, you tend to amplify woulda, coulda, shoulda. When you win, you cover up your sins. Dont let anybody fool you, we worked last year, we won the election. It was stolen.

A hesitant and mild applause followed and Jackson continued:

From John F. Kennedy to Nixon to Carter to Ford to Clinton to Barack, if any of them had to face the impact of Russian interference in such a bold way the foolishness of the Electoral College and the interference of the FBI none of them Hillary won in spite of having a 3-million vote lead. So were not gonna let anybody break our spirit. Were gonna keep fighting back. A big election is coming up this year, and we intend to win.

With that, Jackson introduced Perez.

You can watch Jacksons above remarks just after the 38-minute mark on the Rainbow PUSH Coalitions YouTube page.

Below is a shorter version of his remarks:

(H/T: The American Mirror)

Original post:
Jesse Jackson: Hillary Clinton really 'won the election' against Trump but 'it was stolen' - TheBlaze.com

The Justice Department turned over paperwork Thursday morning showing that Attorney General Jeff Sessions didnt tell the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador when he applied for his security clearance.

The revelation came because a new watchdog group successfully sued for Sessions clearance application under the Freedom of Information Actthough the document they got was heavily redacted.

The Justice Department says Sessions wasnt obligated to tell the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador because he had them in his capacity as a U.S. senator. But Austin Evers, executive director of American Oversight, the watchdog group that got the DOJ to release the document, said Sessions should have revealed the meetings.

We are not talking about the ambassador from the Vatican or from Canada, he said. We are talking about the ambassador from Russia, about whom there is common knowledge there are significant espionage concerns. You should not get cute with questions from the FBI related to national security.

Evers would know. After all, he helped the State Department manage FOIA requests on Benghazi and Hillary Clintons emails.

Using his extensive FOIA experience, hes moved to the other side of those lawsuits, heading a group with six attorneys and three additional staffers looking to dredge up as much information as possible on the new administrationstarting with Sessions.

Through a failure of reading comprehension, they didnt realize we asked for Jeff Sessions signature block as well, said Evers. Theres nothing on the document that shows that its Jeff Sessions.

Sessions told the Senate under oath that he hadnt met with Russians during the presidential campaign, though he had had two conversations with the Russian ambassador. After news broke about those conversations, he recused himself from the Russia probe, which has since been handed over to special counsel Robert Mueller.

American Oversight will return to court next month in hopes of getting more information from the DOJ on Sessions clearance form.

But it isnt stopping there.

Evers and his group are also pursuing a host of other documents, including communications related to the health care bill. They got a tranche of documents from the Office of Management and the Department of Health and Human Services about the negotiations leading up to the passage of the Houses bill, and will get more emails July 31 and Sept. 5.

They are also digging for documents related to Ivanka Trump and are suing the departments of Commerce, Education, Labor, and Treasury for communications the presidents daughter has had with senior officials there.

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The group is small but could do to the Trump administration what Judicial Watch did to Hillary Clinton.

Evers is more aware than most of the extraordinary power of the Freedom of Information Act. A litigator himself, he spent two and a half years as an Obama appointee at the State Department, where he helped handle the release of documents from investigations into the Benghazi attack and Clintons personal email server.

As a political employee, Evers had no role in deciding which documents were released, or when. He told The Daily Beast his job was to ensure the various congressional committees investigating Clintons emails and Benghazi got documents that the agency released because of FOIA requests.

No investigator likes to be the last to know, Evers said. And so one of the main things that we did was to ensure that if a document came up in one context, that it was transferred over to the other investigations to ensure the disclosures went to everybody they should.

FOIA requests can have enormous political impact. The year before the 2016 presidential election, the State Department had to release thousands of pages of emails that Clinton sent through her personal server, and the content of those emails generated hundreds of additional stories.

The revelations put Clintons email server in the headlines for months and months, and did nothing to help her shake her reputation of being secretive.

That said, American Oversight is much smaller than Judicial Watch, which has been embarrassing both Republicans and Democrats with its own dogged litigation for decades.

Still, six litigators can do a lot of damage. The Trump administration will give them plenty to work with, and they know it.

Were holding the Trump administration accountablebecause Congress wont, reads its homepage.

Read more:
Hillary Clinton's State Department FOIA Expert Goes After Trump White House - Daily Beast