A monster or a hero? How the RT.com framed Donald Trump’s agenda during the U.S. presidential campaign 2015-2016
A monster or a hero? How the RT.com framed Donald Trump’s agenda during the U.S. presidential campaign 2015-2016

Summary/Abstract: This article attempts to understand how the Russia-funded RT television website (RT.com) framed the candidacy of Donald Trump during the U.S. presidential campaign in 2015 and 2016. It aims to find out whether it was really involved in creating an artificial pro-Trump image and supported his cause against Hillary Clinton, as some reports suggest. Its secondary objective is to understand what kind of agenda (including the topics and issues discussed) was adopted by this webpage when referring to this Republican candidate. In order to reach these goals, the study was founded on the concept of agenda-setting and exploited content analysis of the textual layer of RT.com. This manuscript argues that while the attitude of this website evolved in time, it cannot be confirmed that it was overly biased in favour of Donald Trump. At the same time, however, RT.com was heavily interested in defending his argumentation on the inexistence of the Trump-Putin “bromance” and the lack of the “Russian factor” in the American elections. Moreover, it featured multiple pieces of news which provided a negative image of the U.S. democratic processes through the association of the 2016 presidential campaign with scandals, violence, extremism and crimes.

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