I’ve noticed a change in my morning reading habits. Before I turn to US newspapers’ homepages, I’ve been checking Twitter, where I begin by searching @realdonaldtrump for overnight news about the US president-elect’s transition. So I am coming round to the conclusion of several communications experts: Donald Trump’s Twitter strategy may indeed be genius — and it could well reshape the relationship between politics and the media.
And yet, while Twitter has served Mr Trump brilliantly so far, it’s also a dangerous fixation that I hope will stop on the day he enters the White House. As the world watches for policy clues from the new administration, the daily tweeting is showing up Mr Trump’s ignorance of diplomatic subtleties and seeming disregard for geopolitical complexities. The tweeting won’t look so clever if 140 uncensored characters spark a war in some part of the world.
For months, Twitter was an effective insurgency weapon, used to circumvent the mainstream media. Candidate Trump reached out directly to a public whose craving for change he understood better than most. Despite his tendency to mix truth and fiction, he managed to convince voters that he was more credible than established media.