Journal of Social and Political
Sciences
ISSN 2615-3718 (Online)
ISSN 2621-5675 (Print)
Published: 23 October 2024
Mapping the Trump-Harris First Presidential Debate: Narratives of Trumpism Propagation Rattle Voters' Ontological Security
Maria Merkouraki, Konstantina Tzioti
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece), Leiden University (Netherlands)
Download Full-Text Pdf
10.31014/aior.1991.07.04.522
Pages: 31-39
Keywords: Οntological Security, Trumpism, American Voters, Crisis Narratives, Populism
Abstract
Following the first-ever face-to-face Trump-Harris presidential debate in Philadelphia, broadcast by ABC News from the National Constitution Center and attracting an audience exceeding 67 million viewers, this analysis delves into the backdrop of the emergence of Trumpian rhetoric, the crystallized existential concerns and insecurities of American voters. In particular, the design of this research, based on a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of Donald Trump's political discourse, revealed that his language communication is characterized by a series of crisis narratives and a distinct "Us vs. Them" mentality, suggesting a nuanced perspective on the relationship between political narratives, threat, and fear. This article also delineates different modes of ontological security theory and demonstrates how Trump perpetuates and radicalizes a populist-nationalist electoral environment. In contrast, Kamala Harris's narrative approach seeks to foster unity and mutual respect and bring to the spotlight the real issues that torment the US. Accordingly, by focusing on how Donald Trump discursively promotes a strong conflictual ideological identity, a crucial question arises: How do his narratives influence the fearfulness and perceptions of American voters? The initial findings reveal that voters who make a significant effort to uphold established political narratives often feel a high level of insecurity, which Trumpism imperatives skillfully manipulate. Particularly, it appears that "Trump-speak" (Homolar & Scholz, 2019) effectively stoked broad hostility towards Kamala Harris by depicting her as both vulnerable and perilous. Simultaneously, the story-discussion between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris unfolds in the paradoxical context of an evolving hero-Trumpian narrative, which tends to incite an ontological "insurrection" among Trump's supporters.
References
Abromeit, J. (2016). Transformations of producerist populism in Western Europe. In J. Abromeit, B. M. Chesterton, G. Marotta, & Y. Norman (Eds.), Transformations of populism in Europe and the Americas: History and recent tendencies (pp. 231–264). London and New York, NY: Bloomsbury.
Arfi, Badredine. (1998). ‘Ethnic Fear: The Social Construction of Insecurity’, Security Studies 8(1): 151–203.
Bell, J, M. Reid, J. Dyson, A. Schlosser, T. Alexander. (2019). ‘There’s just huge anxiety: ontological security, moral panic, and the decline in young people’s mental health and well-being in the UK’, Qualitative Research in Medicine & Healthcare, 3, pp 87-97.
Browning, C.S. (2018). ‘Brexit, existential anxiety and ontological (in)security’, European Security, 27(3), pp. 336-355.
Canovan, M. (2002). Taking Politics to the People: Populism as the Ideology of Democracy. In: Mény, Y., Surel, Y. (eds) Democracies and the Populist Challenge. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403920072_2
Castells, M. (2000). ‘Materials for an exploratory theory of the network society’, British Journal of Sociology, 51(1), pp. 5–24.
Cinnirella, Marco. (1998). ‘Exploring Temporal Aspects of Social Identity’, European Journal of Social Psychology 28: 227–48.
Moynihan, Donald and Roberts, Alasdair S., Dysfunction by Design: Trumpism as Administrative Doctrine (December 18, 2020). Forthcoming in Public Administration Review, 2021, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3740765 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3740765
Franzosi, R. (1998). Narrative Analysis—Or why (and how) sociologists should be interested in narrative. Annual Review of Sociology, 24(1), 517–554. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.24.1.517
Giddens A. (1991). Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. California: Stanford University Press.
Gustafsson, K., & Krickel-Choi, N. C. (2020). Returning to the roots of ontological security: Insights from the existentialist anxiety literature. European Journal of International Relations, 26(3), 875–895. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066120927073
Homolar, A., & Scholz, R. (2019). The power of Trump-speak populist crisis narratives and ontological security. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 32 (3), 344-364. https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2019.1575796
Juma’h, Ahmad H., and Yazan Alnsour. (2018). "Using Social Media Analytics: The Effect of President Trump’s Tweets on Companies’ Performance." Journal of Accounting and Management Information Systems 17.1 (2018): 100-121.
Kinnvall, C. (2004). Globalization and Religious Nationalism: Self, Identity, and the Search for Ontological Security’, Political Psychology, 25(5), pp. 741-767.
Laing R.D. (1990). [1960] The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness. London: Penguin Books.
McSweeney, Bill (1999). Security, Identity and Interests: A Sociology of International Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Maria Merkouraki. (2024). Turkey’s Digital Public Diplomacy in the Age of Uncertainty. International Journal of International Relations, Media and Mass Communication Studies Vol.10, No.2, pp.41-54, 2024 Print ISSN: 2059-1845 (Print). Doi: https://doi.org/10.37745/ijirmmcs.15/vol10n24154
Marco D'Eramo. (2013). Populism and the new oligarchy. New Left review.
Martin, J. (2024). Trump’s Raised Fist Will Make History - And Define His Candidacy. PolÃtico EU. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/07/14/trump-shooting-fist-legacy-00168022
Patterson, M. & Monroe, K.R. (1998). Narrative in Political Science. Annual Review of Political Science, 1(1), 315-331. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.1.1.315.
Rich, B. (2021). Political extremism, conflict identities and the search for ontological security in contemporary established democracies’, Academia Letters, Article 602.
Rosenblum, L. D. (2008). Speech Perception as a Multimodal Phenomenon. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17(6), 405-409. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2008.00615.x
Skey, M. (2010). ‘A sense of where you belong in the world’: national belonging, ontological security and the status of the ethnic majority in England’, Nations and Nationalism, 16(4), pp. 715–733.
Somers, M.R. (1994). The narrative constitution of identity: A relational and network approach. Theory and Society, 23 (5), 605-649. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf00992905
Steele, B. J., & Homolar, A. (2019). Ontological insecurities and the politics of contemporary populism. Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 32(3), 214–221. https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2019.1596612
Urbinati, N. (2019). Liquid parties, dense populism. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 45(9-10), 1069-1083. https://doi.org/10.1177/0191453719872274
V. Strike Peterson and A.S. Runyan, Global Gender Issues in the New Millennium, 3rd edn. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, (2010).
Wodak Ruth. (2015). The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean. Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd.
Wagenmakers, E.-J., Sarafoglou, A., & Aczel, B. (2023). Facing the Unknown Unknowns of Data Analysis. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 32(5), 362-368. https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214231168565
READ: Harris-Trump presidential debate transcript - ABC News (go.com)