Thomas Gallagher. Visual Communication Quarterly. Volume 26, Issue 1. January-March 2019.

With social media, presidential figures can communicate directly with citizens without filter, and the self-selecting nature of social media ensures that supporters will comprise the majority of that figure’s social media following. This project examines an example of visual content aimed at a president’s supporters: the Real News Update. Produced by the Trump reelection campaign, the Real News Update mimics the color designs and structures of cable news and uses female anchors to soften messages while emphasizing conflict with the press. In a polarized climate aided by the popularization of outlets like Fox News, the Real News Update apes the style of the press to offer an in-house digitally distributed alternative.

Marshall McLuhan contended that different mediums have distinctive attributes that shape messages and user responses. While television helped make the visual image vital and the spoken word secondary (Postman, 1985), in one sense, “broadcast radio and television were really just extensions of the printing press: expensive, one-to-many media; […] we [didn’t] make TV; we [watched] it” (Rushkoff, 2011, p. 13). Social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram have democratized production, allowing users to create and share original content. This concept extends to politics as well. Before the growth of the Internet and cable and satellite television, there was a relative uniformity of production and messaging. Political organizations could purchase advertising time on media platforms to deliver their commercial content or hope for positive coverage through the filter of established outlets of journalism. “Everybody […] watched one of the evening news [programs] […] [and] the New York Times, the Washington Post, and […] the L.A. Times were where the networks looked every day to kind of decide what they were going to [cover]” (Gallagher, 2017, p. 29). Political campaigns adapted to this media environment by orienting the practice of politics largely toward well-presented soundbites designed to appeal to a reduced attention span (Postman, 1985) and an emphasis on visual rhetoric and the photo op (Adatto, 2008; Erickson, 2000; Jamieson, 1996; Parry-Giles & Parry-Giles, 2002). Today, however, political organizations can create and disseminate content through social media platforms for far less cost.

The Clinton administration was the first presidency to create and share Internet content. As technology has evolved, political organizations have used new tools and adapted tactics to test and reinforce messages that appeal to voters. This project examines one aspect of creative visual content shared exclusively on social media platforms by the two most recent presidential administrations: weekly news recaps. This project examines one example of this kind of presidential messaging: Donald Trump’s Real News Update.

Political and Media Fragmentation

Cohen (2010) asserts that the presidency has undergone a transition from an era of “individual pluralism (1970s-mid-1980s)” to “the current era of polarized parties and fragmented media” (p. 3), and technological changes have played a key role in this shift. Those citizens who want political information can obtain more of it, whereas those who want to ignore the news can do so, without even being passively exposed to it (Prior, 2005). This circumstance inevitably trends toward political content being consumed by citizens who are politically informed. Those citizens may narrow, rather than expand, their consumption of news to sources generally favorable to their political views (Coe et al., 2008) and may even dismiss news coming from sources they perceive to be hostile to their political orientation (Miller & Krosnick, 2000). This pattern leads to an inequality of facts in which partisans have more knowledge of information that confirms their worldview and less knowledge of information that challenges it (Jerit & Barabas, 2012). Stroud (2010) warns that partisan selective exposure leads to increased polarization and finds evidence that increased polarization leads to partisan selective exposure. In that case, a feedback loop would exist, with the consumer leaning toward media sources that support his or her worldview and becoming more polarized, leading the consumer to be even less trusting of news sources that do not support her or his worldview. As such, while social media platforms allow presidential administrations and campaigns to deliver “precisely tailored content […,] targeting audiences anywhere they can be found” (Scacco & Coe, 2016, pp. 2019-20) and “allow for greater control of the message” (Garrett, 2016, p. 77), the self-selecting nature of social media platforms ensures that likely supporters will comprise most of that administration’s or campaign’s social media following.

Social media platforms provide an illusion of intimate connection by providing “people opportunities to interact with the president” through comments, likes, and perhaps the chance for White House figures to share content created by ordinary citizens (Scacco & Coe, 2016, p. 2019). The construction of easily shareable visual imagery can sometimes be initially driven by ordinary people and amplified by a political figure, as in the case of Hillary Clinton’s “text-meme” imagery (Anderson & Sheeler, 2014). A picture of Clinton looking at her cell phone went viral on social media and led many users to create memes based on the image. When Clinton officially launched her Twitter account months later, she used the picture as her official profile picture and her “inaugural tweet referenced the […] meme but signaled Clinton’s intention to take control […], [saying] ‘Thanks for the inspiration @ASmith83 and @Sllambe—I’ll take it from here… #tweetsfromhillary'” (Anderson & Sheeler, 2014, p. 236). The same type of interplay is also illustrated by Donald Trump’s 2017 tweet showcasing a.GIF of the president attacking Vince McMahon at a WWE event in 2007, only with the logo for CNN superimposed over McMahon’s head (Trump, 2017b). The image was initially created by a user on Reddit, and Trump tweeted it on a slow news day. His embrace of the image and CNN’s investigation into the origin of the.GIF inspired thousands of Trump supporters to construct their own. GIFs to create “memes” promoting the president and attacking CNN (Roose, 2017).

Most easily shareable visual content in the presidential sphere, however, operates initially from a top-down hierarchy in which the content originates from within the campaign or White House and then leads to discussion, shares, likes, and possibly new content created by supporters. The Obama White House used Twitter (Finnegan, 2014), Flickr (Finnegan, 2014; Stallabrass, 2009), YouTube, and Facebook (Steinberg, 2013) as platforms to share visual content. The Flickr and Twitter photographic content often showcased “casual, apparently documentary photographs of the president at work and play” (Stallabrass, 2009, p. 197) and allowed the White House to align the 44th president with, and sometimes disassociate from, “past presidents [and] […] American values and achievements” (Finnegan, 2014, p. 213). Yet despite the commenting, liking, and sharing of these posts, it is clear to viewers that “the authorship of these images lies between the photographer, the [Obama] PR people, and Obama himself” (Stallabrass, 2009, p. 201). The subjects of this project, the weekly recap videos produced by the Obama and Trump organizations, follow this top-down hierarchical structure.

Visual Aesthetics

The practice of politics is deeply intertwined with the reporting of news, since politics involves issues of power. Most major national news focuses primarily on “those who hold power within various national or social strata; with the most powerful officials in the most powerful agencies; with the coalition of upper-class and upper-middle-class people which dominates the socioeconomic hierarchy” (Gans, 2004, p. 62). Both political communication and journalism since the popularization of television have illustrated the tension between the imposition of successful formula and attempts to differentiate by pushing the boundaries of those formula. For example, campaigning for oneself for president by traveling the country giving speeches to mobilize supporters, a common practice today, was considered undignified for much of the 19th century. Candidates who violated that formula, such as Andrew Jackson and Stephen Douglas, were often harshly rebuked for being self-serving and undignified (Ellis & Dedrick, 1997; Greenfield, 2014).

The practice of television journalism has also developed certain formulas over time, particularly involving visual aesthetics. Blue is often the dominant tone for cable news programs for a variety of reasons, including tradition, the fact that “the on-air talent can wear just about any color without fear of clashing,” and the internal color representation dynamics of modern televisions. With blue, “every monitor may show it in a slightly altered hue, but it will generally be well-represented [while] green and yellow […] are more apt to go astray” (McLevy, 2016). Blue is also “a positive color for men, signaling authority and control” but a “negative color for women, who perceive it as distant, cold, and aloof” (Schlackman & Douglas, 2003, p. 350). News programs prefer to emphasize authority and distance: “It’s surely better to seem aloof when you’re delivering the news than it is to seem angry” (McLevy, 2016). In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, most news programs began relying primarily on a blue, white, and red color scheme partially to associate themselves with the American flag, and indeed, some programs began displaying the flag on some portion of the screen.

Rhythm has also evolved over time, both in terms of stories themselves and the timing allocated to each story. By the 1970s “the pacing” of television news reports “increased” dramatically, with “an increasing flow of images” taken from many different places “squeezed into a shorter time span” with hyperactive editing and cutting (Barnhurst & Steele, 1997, pp. 47-48). In the studio spots between the specific news reports, producers such as Roone Arledge on World News Tonight and Roger Ailes later at CNBC and Fox News made a priority of utilizing “bright studio lighting, colorful graphics, and attention-grabbing sound effects” (Collins, 2004, p. 142). The timing allocated to each story also depends on the amount of time given to each program, which fluctuates depending on the time allocated for advertisements. November 2016, for example, had more time devoted to advertisements than the previous month (Lafayette, 2016).

The visual aesthetics of gender also play a role in the production of news that differs from politics. Research on gender and television news anchors has largely produced mixed results with some commonality on men being perceived as more credible than women (Balon, Philport, & Beadle, 1978; Brann & Himes, 2010) and little difference in the way men and women approach news (Ross, 2004). Weibel, Wissmath, and Groner (2008) find a notable difference between the credibility of the message and the credibility of the anchor communicating that message: While male newscasters are perceived as more credible than female newsreaders by the subjects of the study, “a message read by a female newscaster [is] perceived as being more credible” than a message read by a male newscaster (p. 479). This concept raises an important distinction between the practice of politics and the practice of television news. A news organization is often anonymous in terms of hierarchy. The executive producers and management figures who have significant authority in choosing stories to report and talent to work on air largely remain off-screen while the talent (anchors and reporters) communicate messages and represent the program and network to the public. In politics the top person in a political organization’s hierarchy is the candidate, a public figure. Surrogates must prove adept in communicating messages in a visual medium, and at least one study suggests that women tend to “humanize” messages more overtly than men do (Chambers, Steiner, & Fleming, 2004), which may prove valuable in the context of politics. Still, surrogates are subordinate to the candidate; the success or failure of the organization is placed squarely on the electoral success or failure of the candidate. Since the message is the most important aspect of communication for a presidential campaign apparatus, with the messenger being secondary to the message, there is a notable value for a political organization to utilize female surrogates to communicate messages, if Weibel et al. (2008) are correct.

Trump and the Press

The relationship between politicians and journalists covering political beats has always featured public tension. Bennett (2011) contends that the press engages with politicians in an adversarial ritual in which criticism and confrontation “should occur regularly [and] challenges and charges will aim to provoke personal mistakes or political confrontations rather than deeper investigations of issues” (p. 196) but ultimately refrain from “challenging the authority of government or pushing too far into institutional failings” (p. 198). Generally, the press portrays the role of the president as “the ultimate protector of order” and “the nation’s moral leader […] who states and represents the national values” as “agent of the national will” (Gans, 2004, p. 63). A president who does not live up to this standard “through his own behavior and the concern he shows for the behavior of others” (Gans, 2004, p. 63) arouses considerable negative coverage that stems from “concern for social cohesion, particularly those stories which report violations of the mores rather than the laws” (Gans, 2004, p. 60). News reporting on action deemed scandalous reemphasizes the boundaries of mores by “publicizing [the action while expressing] shock and disapproval” (Bennett, 2011, p. 200). Every president finds this adversarial press ritual to be disruptive, and supporters often attack the press for being “biased or hostile” but only “occasionally [are] such charges dramatized through formal political attacks” by the politicians personally (Bennett, 2011, p. 198).

The Trump administration has criticized the press more directly than its predecessors while also highlighting what it perceives as favorable coverage from one specific organization. Trump personally often referred to the “fake news” as the “enemy of the people” while also attacking specific media organizations and individuals, sometimes giving them derogatory nicknames. Trump ridiculed organizations such as the “Amazon Washington Post and the Failing New York Times” (Trump, 2017c) and individuals like “Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd [of] NBC News” (Trump, 2017a). The Trump campaign revoked the credentials of journalists working for the Washington Post during the campaign (Farhi, 2016). Yet perhaps more importantly, Trump also personally promoted Fox News programs or personalities in 185 tweets during his first year in office (Gallagher, in press) and hired a former executive at Fox News to contribute to his administration’s communications department (Breuninger, 2018). While Barack Obama personally criticized Fox News on occasion (Mooney, 2010), Obama did not specifically promote one specific organization as ideal in the manner that Trump has done with Fox News.

Both Obama and Trump recognize in their words the importance of Fox News. A Pew Research poll conducted in the aftermath of the 2016 election found that over 40% of respondents who voted for Trump considered Fox News to be their primary source of news (Gottfried, Barthel, & Mitchell, 2017). There is evidence that programs mixing opinion and news on networks such as Fox do contribute to shaping mass opinion, even beyond their viewership, while hardening the opinions of those viewers (Levendusky, 2013). Martin and Yurukoglu (2017) contend that Fox News has increased Republican vote share in past elections, more so than any corresponding network. There is also evidence that many Republicans have rejected the version of reality offered by mainstream journalists: A Gallup poll conducted in August 2017 found that only 14% of Republican survey respondents believe “news organizations get the facts straight” compared to over 60% of Democratic survey respondents (Dugan & Auter, 2017). Some Trump voters have reported feelings of perceived disrespect from coastal elites, including news organizations, that have hardened their support for Trump (Balz, 2018; Hohmann, 2018). There is also some evidence from experiments performed by scholars of political psychology showing that anger, more than anxiety or enthusiasm, is the emotion most likely to mobilize voters to participate in elections (Valentino, Brader, Groenendyk, Gregorowicz, & Hutchings, 2011).

Political campaigns have adapted to the current era of political polarization and media fragmentation by emphasizing “image manipulation [over] policy creation and implementation” (Freie, 2011, p. 21). The Trump presidency is not the first to experiment with creating its own video content and distributing it through social media platforms. In April 2010 the Obama administration’s communications department began producing West Wing Week to condense many of the most important or underrecognized activities into a four- to seven-minute video package easily shared on YouTube. West Wing Week episodes feature an expository style in which press secretary Josh Earnest provides narration while never appearing on camera to directly address the viewer. Instead, the video focuses on displaying footage of the president and administration officials in action—giving speeches, talking to cabinet officials, or just meeting ordinary Americans—from a behind-the-scenes perspective. While there are occasionally interview snippets with administration officials such as deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes, Obama, while a major visual and audible focus, never directly addresses the camera himself as the subject of an interview. The videos feature fast cutting and frequent camera movement in specific shots. West Wing Week also attempts to strike a balance between serious issues and lighter, quieter moments behind the scenes in each episode. A typical episode produced in October 2016 featured Obama boarding Air Force One, with the cameraman already onboard catching Obama coming up the stairs and entering the cabin; Obama casting his early vote in the presidential election; and the vice president’s wife, Jill Biden, attending a USA-Cuba soccer game, along with other moments gathered from the week (Obama White House, 2016). The behind-the-scenes guerilla-style of the video reflects Obama as a youthful presence willing to experiment. The format is particularly appealing to younger, more tech-savvy viewers who formed a major portion of the Obama coalition (Robillard, 2012).

In July 2017, a senior administration official suggested that the White House communications department “needs to be run like a news channel with producers, scripts, and narration” (Scaramucci, 2017). Roger Ailes and his successors strove to have Fox News utilize “the best elements of the entertainment world” with an “emphasis […] on finding stars” (Collins, 2004, p. 142). This project examines one aspect of the Trump presidency’s use of new technologies to create and disseminate content through social media: the Real News Update. In illustrating how closely the Real News Update adheres to Fox News’ visual aesthetics, I hope to reveal the potential implications of specific visual design practices through a careful qualitative description and comparison of a relevant, selected sample of video presentations. Do certain aesthetics visually position anchors and contributors within a design context that enhances their appearance of legitimacy and authority? What potentially significant implications are attached to the use of Fox News-style graphic presentation in partisan political campaign programming?

Method

This project features a qualitative description and comparison of videos produced by the Trump campaign and released on Facebook and YouTube beginning with the first Real News Update video released in July 2017 and continuing through October 2018, a total of 70 videos. This total includes 56 official Real News Update videos and 14 “special topics” videos, including Advisory Board Commentary and Opinion and Real News Insights videos. My primary source for this project is the president’s personal Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/DonaldTrump/, where the videos are posted on a weekly basis. I also used two secondary sources. The first is the official “Donald J. Trump for President” YouTube channel, accessible at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAql2DyGU2un1Ei2nMYsqOA. The other secondary source used is the Facebook page of the president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump: https://www.facebook.com/LaraLTrump/. The Trump campaign relied heavily on Donald Trump’s family members for campaign events, and these Real News Update videos are no exception, with 35 videos starring Lara Trump.

It is important to note that the Real News Update is produced by the Trump campaign, not the Trump administration. In January 2017, Donald Trump took the unprecedented step of legally beginning his reelection campaign shortly after being inaugurated for his first term, which has allowed his campaign, Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., to operate separately from the official administration (Markay & Suebsaeng, 2017). Under this legal framework, the Trump campaign can produce video so long as they acknowledge that it is paid for by the campaign. The Real News Update videos fall under this production framework. This fact potentially adds a partisan veneer to the videos: A presidential administration must theoretically serve all Americans regardless of political leaning, while a campaign apparatus can promote its candidate and attack politicians and the party in opposition.

Discussion

While the West Wing Week videos produced by the Obama administration were produced in guerilla documentary style, the most striking thing about the Real News Update videos is how closely they ape the design and feel of cable programs on networks like Fox News and CNN. One key difference between the Real News Update and the Obama West Wing Week videos involves pacing. Each Real News Update weekly recap video runs for roughly three minutes; the West Wing Week videos, by contrast, ran for roughly seven minutes per episode. While the West Wing Week episodes tend to contain content from each day of the week, the Real News Update videos generally feature only four stories that are covered for roughly 40 seconds each. The adherence to a four-segment format mimics the four segments an hour-long cable program generally observes due to the established rhythm of commercial breaks coming every 10 to 12 minutes. By cutting down the week’s most important stories into a three-minute block and aping the flow of the four-segment format of television, the Real News Update videos theoretically increase their likelihood of being viewed in full by a larger audience with a decreasing attention span. However, the pace is not noticeably quicker in the Real News Update videos because of the visual elements that make the videos move more deliberately to the viewer. The lack of visual movement through camerawork is a key element of the Real News Update. Unlike cable news programs that often feature multiple cameras recording the host simultaneously, allowing the production team to cut between camera shots, the Real News Update videos are shot with one steady camera. In this one shot the host is framed in a medium shot, allowing an inch of headroom above and cutting off at the bottom just below the host’s chest.

Color is another important aspect of the Real News Update. Most cable news programs rely primarily on a blue, white, and red color scheme partially for the reasons listed previously and partially also to associate themselves with the American flag. Each Real News Update video (and related videos such as the Advisory Board Commentary and Opinion and Real News Insights) begins and concludes with a graphic of a flowing American flag and a brassy militant instrumental musical cue. While the actual sounds may have been created by a keyboard, the intention is to signal a serious and patriotic horn section. When transitioning to a different segment or story during the broadcast a red, white, and blue stripe wipes from the bottom left to the top right of the screen. The Real News Update videos adhere to this color pattern as a rule. After showing the American flag to open the video, a royal blue screen with the “Trump/Pence Make America Great Again!” slogan written in white and surrounded by a dark red box with “45” in red at the bottom of the box and five small white stars at the top of the box appears. Below the campaign logo is a white “Real News Update” text in all capital letters, and below that is the required legal text—”Paid for by Donald J. Trump for President, Inc.”—in white text, capital letters, and surrounded by a white box. The royal blue campaign screen transitions into the main part of the video with the anchor delivering the news. On the bottom right of the screen a white lower third super with blue print notes the number of weeks since Trump’s inauguration; the January 26, 2018 episode, for example, showcases “Week 53” text (Trump, 2018a). On the rest of the bottom of the screen a red chyron with the words “Text Trump to 88022 to Subscribe” printed in white capital letters enclosed within it adds contrast to the dominant blue and white atmosphere.

Like Fox, CNN, and MSNBC, the Real News Update also contains a specific logo situated on the bottom corner of the screen (also known as a bug) to emphasize a brand, but like Fox, and unlike the other two, the bug is subtler in tone and more transparent. CNN and MSNBC broadcast their brands by featuring their network names on a sharp white block background (MSNBC in text is in black, while CNN in text is in red). The Fox bug, with “Fox News” in white text on a big blue background and “Channel” in white text on a thin red background underneath, tends to blend into the dominant blue backgrounds of the program. The Real News Update bug features a faded white “T” in a faded white outline of a square; the square itself is transparent. These design touches are meant to evoke the Fox News feel with blue as the dominant color of the broadcast and red and white in supporting roles, just as on Fox’s most popular programs historically and currently like The O’Reilly Factor, Tucker Carlson Tonight, and Special Report.

In April 2018, the Trump campaign redesigned the visual aesthetic of the main section of the program, but one constant between the older videos and the newer videos is a reliance on this red, white, and blue color scheme. For the earlier episodes produced between July 2017 and April 2018, the main segments feature the anchor speaking in front of a royal blue background banner featuring only the Trump/Pence campaign logo, some white stars, and a white “http://DonaldJTrump.com” advertisement. These older videos featured over-the-shoulder (OTS) pictures used to add a visual cue to the story the anchor is discussing. These over-the-shoulders also feature white and red as augmenting colors: Below each picture in the OTS is a white rectangular background with two red stars bordering a brief phrase of text, always capitalized and always rendered in blue. When the camera cuts away from the host to showcase a picture that takes up most of the screen, a red lower third super with white text and a slight blue punctuation at the right corner of the super appears under corresponding picture to add context to it. The viewer’s eyes are immediately drawn to the picture first and to the lower third super second. The newer videos, beginning in April 2018, feature a slightly different visual aesthetic that continues the major color scheme. The anchor speaks in front of a blue background with some opaquely white stars located over the anchor’s right should. Over the anchor’s left shoulder is a smaller “Trump/Pence” logo like the logo from the opening sequence of the video.

There are five major changes to the newer versions of the videos, beginning in April 2018, besides the aforementioned background details. The first major change, located on the left side of the screen while the anchor speaks, is a countdown sidebar previewing the stories that will be covered during the video. This sidebar resembles the sidebar used by ESPN’s SportsCenter, which gives viewers an update on the major subjects or highlight packages that will soon air. The Real News Update sidebar is shaded in a slightly darker blue than the rest of the background with white text in capital letters displayed in a medium-small font; when a story is being covered, the story on the sidebar is highlighted in white while the text changes to red. At the top of the sidebar, in a slightly larger font, is a logo stating “Real News Update” with a star and two lines above the text. The choice of font size on the main portion of the sidebar ensures that the upcoming stories do not overwhelm the viewer, allowing the viewer to focus on the main story being cover. For example: On the June 30, 2018, episode, the sidebar features a “Supreme Court Retirement,” the “Travel Ban,” a “Trump Rally: Fargo, ND,” and “Angel Families,” referring to parents whose children were victims of illegal immigrant violence (Trump, 2018c). This visual redesign can help viewers more clearly understand the topics being discussed, but one downside to a sidebar design on a platform such as YouTube, in which viewers have control over what they watch, is that viewers may decide to skip forward to a different story and thus miss out on a key part of the messages that are intended to carry some weight.

The other four major changes visually between the older videos and the newer videos beginning in April 2018 involve B-roll and camera movement. In the older videos B-roll primarily involved still pictures, and for some segments there is no B-roll at all; instead the host speaking directly to the camera and the OTS are the only visual cues for the entire segment. No Real News Update recap segment before the redesign in April 2018 featured any B-roll video. Instead, when B-roll is introduced, the B-roll consists of still pictures of the president, relevant members of the administration, or supporters captured watching the president as he speaks or acts. To create visual momentum, the camera shooting the still image moves while the image is displayed on screen, which it usually is for at least five seconds. The extended length of time the still image remains on screen occurs because the producers often use only one image per segment. One reason this particularly deliberate style of visual production is employed is because it places more agency on the words spoken by the host. In the redesigned newer videos, B-roll video is included, and both the B-roll and the anchor’s words are subtitled on the bottom of the screen. There are positive and negative effects to this approach from the perspective of the videos’ creators. On one hand, subtitling all of the words spoken in the video ensures that the viewer has an opportunity to comprehend exactly what message is being communicated by the campaign, either through the president speaking in a B-roll clip or through the president’s surrogate, the video’s anchor. The downside to consistent subtitling is that a viewer may focus almost exclusively on the subtitles, which potentially robs a particularly striking or vital visual of its potency. However, the symmetry between the subtitles and the verbal message being communicated by the anchor or the president during a B-roll clip provides less risk of audiovisual discontinuity than a standard practice of cable news: the “breaking news” scroller. Cable news channels often feature news items scrolling along the bottom of the screen that have little or nothing to do with the topic being discussed by the anchors and guests on a program. The main text chyron located above the scroller also features text that references the main story being discussed. The Trump Real News Update videos avoid this dichotomy by having all text on screen reflect either the topic being discussed or promoting the Trump campaign.

In addition, while only one camera is used to focus on the anchor, the camera occasionally shoots the anchor from a more close-up position, creating the illusion of varied camerawork. In each video, the story segment begins with the anchor speaking from a medium shot before transitioning to B-roll and then returns after the B-roll concludes with the anchor framed a close-up shot. There are no dissolves or wipes used when the camera switches from the anchor to B-roll or from B-roll to the anchor, but there are transitions between stories in the newer videos that also feature sound effects to accompany the dissolves. However, the use of the camera shots in this order (anchor in medium shot → B-roll → anchor in close-up) provides a more seemingly natural transition within a segment itself despite the use of hard cuts exclusively within segments. This allows the use of dissolves to signify a new story and marks a cleaner break from segment to segment.

The Real News Insights, which are posted occasionally and not on a weekly basis, feature split-screen discussions between an anchor and a guest that move at a more leisurely pace. Each of the split-screen discussions run for roughly 10 minutes, and speech excerpts given by the president are included, just as Obama speech excerpts were used in West Wing Week. This format corresponds with the practices of cable news to schedule 10- to 12-minute segments between commercial breaks. The visual presentation of these Real News Insights mimics the Fox style by using a swirling blue background surrounding the white outlined split screen with the anchor placed in front of a city skyline at night, showing viewers a black background with hundreds of tiny lights to help illuminate the anchor. In these videos the guest usually sits in front of a television studio backdrop that is also colored blue. However, the leisurely, friendly conversation between one guest and a host differs from the conflict-driven nature of many cable news segments. CNN and Fox News often book multiple guests in a single segment, and sometimes conflict between the guests breaks out with the anchor attempting to moderate the argument. To date, the Trump campaign videos have not done so, as they wish to create an intimate vibe that celebrates the president and his agenda. The choice of visual background adds to the laid-back vibe of the conversation, with the dimmed blues and blacks and the city skyline lulling viewers into a night time ambiance. Traditional cable networks such as Fox News and CNN often use sharper background colors, including touches of red and whites and predominately utilizing lighter shades of blue, to keep viewers more alert in these types of segments for the verbal fireworks that may come.

One final notable visual element of the Real News Update videos involves gender. While Fox News airs or has aired programs hosted by men (Hannity, The O’Reilly Factor, Tucker Carlson Tonight), women (The Ingraham Angle, Justice with Judge Jeanine, The Kelly File), or a combination of men and women (America’s Newsroom, Fox & Friends), the Real News Update has exclusively used women as anchors to balance the masculine feel of the Trump administration and the dominant blue vibe of the color scheme. Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law, has anchored most of Real News Update videos since its inception, but other Real News Update content has also been hosted by prominent female Trump supporters, including Pierson, Kayleigh McEnany, and Joy Villa. This choice is deliberate both on the surface and in relation to the scripts produced for each video. At a surface level, the use of women exclusively as anchors attempts to make the president “look softer and more egalitarian” (Vitali, 2017) and adds a more delicate vignette to the harsh edges of the Trump persona, which has been deliberately constructed to project the image of an alpha male (Kelly & Krol, 2017; McAdams, 2017). Beyond the surface level, there is another factor in employing women for this task. While research on the subject of gender and television news anchors has largely produced mixed results with some commonality on men being perceived as more credible than women (Balon et al., 1978; Brann & Himes, 2010), Weibel et al. (2008) find a notable difference between the credibility of the message and the credibility of the anchor communicating that message: While male newscasters are perceived as more credible than female newsreaders by the subjects of the study, “a message read by a female newscaster [was] perceived as being more credible” than a message read by a male newscaster (p. 479). The message is the most important aspect of communication for a presidential campaign apparatus, with the messenger being secondary to the message.

In rare cases, though, the subject matter being discussed also provides an advantage to the campaign in using women to communicate messages. On the January 26, 2018, episode when discussing the president’s speech at the Right to Life March, Lara Trump says that the president’s “words of comfort will no doubt inspire marchers to continue their quest to protect the unborn through prayer and compassionate action” (Trump, 2018a). The message takes on an added resonance coming from a female anchor as opposed to a male anchor when speaking about abortion. Lara Trump’s persona as anchor, both as a woman and as the daughter-in-law of the president, is intended to emphasize the portrayal of the president as the protector of citizens and values and is supposed to blunt the impact of an attack on the “fake news” from the more aggressive tone conveyed by a male anchor.

Interestingly, the 14 “special topics” videos, including Advisory Board Commentary and Opinion and Real News Insights, do feature a mix of men and women. The Advisory Board Commentary and Opinion videos have the same visual presentation as the Real News Update, run for roughly the same two-to-three-minute length, and feature one person talking about a certain issue, such as Tony Shaffer discussing the president’s national security strategy or Steve Rogers connecting the president to illustrious predecessors on Presidents Day (Trump, 2017c; Trump, 2018b). The Advisory Board Commentary and Opinion videos copied the visual aesthetic of the original Real News Update videos, and notably the campaign stopped creating Advisory Board Commentary and Opinion videos soon after the video production reset of the Real News Update in April 2018.

Conclusion

Lara Trump defended production of the Real News Update videos by noting, “If we had a fair shake within the regular news cycle, we wouldn’t feel the need to post this sort of thing” (Baragona, 2017). Presidential administrations have traditionally displayed annoyance at the traditional national press, but the Trump administration’s all-out war on outlets such as CNN has taken the practice to a new extreme. Providing supporters with its own account of the week’s events not only allows the Trump administration to help drive the national conversation but also cements supporters’ distrust of traditional mainstream organizations.

The Trump campaign’s Real News Update videos imitate a visual aesthetic familiar to many of the president’s voters: the style of cable news. From the use of similar colors and camera framing to the creation of distinctive watermarks and backgrounds, the Real News Update videos follow in the footsteps of Fox News and CNN to provide viewers with a similar alternative to those platforms. Yet it is important to note how the Trump campaign’s relationships with those platforms and its conception of its voter base influence their production values in a certain direction. The administration’s cozy relationship with Fox News—and its vitriolic stance toward CNN and MSNBC—is reflected in how more closely the Real News Update videos reflect the Fox visual aesthetic. Like Fox, the Trump campaign’s videos utilize blue in a more dominant role than CNN and MSNBC, which use white and red more consistently. Like Fox, the Trump campaign’s watermarked logo is unobtrusive and blends into the overall visual production. Like Fox, the main camera shot on the anchor is more of a medium shot than the close-up favored by many CNN programs. Given how often the president has promoted Fox News programs on his Twitter platform, it is not surprising that the Trump campaign would take cues from Fox on producing a visual aesthetic that soothes potential viewers who may already watch Fox. Just as the style of the Obama administration’s West Wing Week reflected visual practices that appeal to the younger elements that made up a significant portion of the Obama voting coalition, the Real News Update videos utilize familiar video production practices to address an older voting demographic comfortable with the cable news style.