And the Oscar goes to…
Donald Trump?
The Academy Awards proved once again to be one of the hottest social media moments, but not for the reason anyone could have seen coming. While host Jimmy Kimmel, presenters, and winners delivered anti-Trump messages, Trump supporters launched a social media campaign to combat the conversation — demonstrating, not for the first time, the power of user-generated social activity.
More than three million social media posts mentioned the Oscars between 6 and 11 p.m. eastern, peaking with 1.2 million posts between 9 and 10 p.m., according to Talkwalker, a social media analytics firm. However, the two trending hastags at the close of the Academy Awards ceremony were #MAGA, #WinnerisDJT, and #TrumpWins4USA.
The social media campaign, which was not prompted by the administration itself, was an effort by Trump supporters to get the President trending, and perhaps to counteract any anticipated negativity during the Academy Awards telecast.
“Trump’s supporters’ concerted effort to hijack the awards show with a hashtag campaign tied to #Oscar2017 largely took over the social stratosphere and pushed actual movie titles and celebrities down the list of trending topics,” said Todd Grossman, CEO at Talkwalker.
At the end of the broadcast, #MAGA (with 44,000 mentions), #WinnerIsDJT (43,000 mentions) and #TrumpWins4USA (with 41,000) trailed only #Oscars2017 (247,000 mentions) among all trending hashtags, according to Talkwalker.
Political affiliation aside, the results proved Trump and his supporters continue to produce results on social media, and illustrated how effective organic and spontaneous social campaigns can be.
“The Trump campaign showed it could win the social media war throughout the campaign, debates and election and his emboldened supporters went after Hollywood with an aggressive hashtag campaign, perhaps to counteract any comments directed at Trump by Hollywood stars.”
