In President Donald Trump’s second term, everything is content. Videos of immigration raids are shared widely on X by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), conspiracy theories dictate policy, and prominent right-wing podcasters and influencers have occupied high-level government roles. The second Trump administration is, to put it bluntly, very online.
Trump and his supporters have long trafficked in—and benefited from—misinformation and conspiracy theories, leveraging them to build visibility on social media platforms and set the tone of national conversations. During his first term, Trump was famous for announcing the administration’s positions and priorities via tweet. In the years since, social media platforms have become friendlier environments for conspiracy theories and those who promote them, helping them spread more widely. Trump’s playbook has adjusted accordingly.
Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, says that social media, particularly right-wing social media ecosystems, are no longer just a way for Trump to control conversations and public perception. The administration, he says, is now actively making decisions and shaping policy based primarily on how they’ll be perceived online. Their priority is what right-wing communities care about—regardless of whether it’s real.
WIRED spoke to Moynihan, who argues that the US has entered a new level of enmeshment between the internet and politics, in what he calls a “clicktatorship.”
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
WIRED: To start us off, what is the “clicktatorship”?
Don Moynihan: A “clicktatorship” is a form of government that combines a social media worldview alongside authoritarian tendencies. This implies that people working in this form of government are not just using online platforms as a mode of communication, but that their beliefs, judgement, and decisionmaking reflect, are influenced by, and are directly responsive to the online world to an extreme degree. The “clicktatorship” views everything as content, including basic policy decisions and implementation practices.
The supply of a platform that encourages right-wing conspiracies and the demand of an administration for people who can traffic in those conspiracies is what’s giving us the current moments of “clicktatorship” that we’re experiencing.
The “clicktatorship” is generating these images to justify the occupation of American cities by military forces, or to justify cutting off resources to states that did not support the president, to do things that would have truly shocked us a decade ago.
Trump’s first presidency was characterized by a sort of showmanship. How is that different from what we’re seeing now?
The first Trump presidency might be understood as a “TV presidency,” where watching The Apprentice or Fox News gave you real insight into the milieu in which Trump was operating. The second Trump presidency is the “Truth Social or X presidency,” where it is very hard to interpret without the reference points of those online platforms. Some of the content and messaging that the president or other senior policymakers use is stuffed with inside references, messaging that doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you’re already in that online community.
Modes of discourse have also changed. We’re seeing very senior policymakers exhibit the patterns and habits that work online. Pam Bondi going to a Senate hearing with a list of zingers and printed out X posts as a means of responding to a traditional accountability process, reflects how this online mode of discourse is shaping how public officials view their real life roles.
There’s been a lot of research about the polarizing and harmful nature of social media. What does it mean that our political leaders are people who have not only been successful in manipulating social media, but have themselves been manipulated by it?