Celebrity 'Outsider' Politicians in the Digital Realm

Celebrity ‘Outsider’Politicians in the Digital Realm: Donald Trump’s Online Charismatic Authority considers Trump’s impact on elite level behaviour by analysing how his extremist online political discourses shape communications outputs.

Celebrity ‘outsider’ politicians like Donald Trump command credibility by establishing themselves through a conjunction of deinstitutionalisation, personalisation and parasocial familiarity. To provide a systematic analysis of this phenomenon, the book asks how Trump’s celebrity has been utilised to transfer his ‘business assets’ from the ‘field’ of entertainment to the ‘field’ of politics through his populism. It analyses, assesses and explains the significance of Trump’s celebrity personality in shaping the impression management throughout the 2024 Republican Presidential nomination and General Elections processes. Throughout his campaigns it has not been about who Trump is, but it is about what he represented in terms of American supremacism, brash salesmanship and personal narcissism.

Celebrity ‘Outsider’ Politicians in the Digital Realm will appeal to students, scholars and political practitioners interested in political communication, popular culture and politics.