Abstract

In the paper “Fake News and its Impact on the US Election Campaign of Donald Trump”, my aim is to study the timeline of the 2016 elections in US and the impact of the fake news on the conclusive results, ending with Donald Trump winning. ”Fake news” became a very popular term at the beginning of 2017. Even if it was already pretty popular among internet users, people did not pay too much attention to it. However, things changed quickly after Donald Trump won US elections in 2016. Before going deeper with the overly sensitive subject, it is important to understand the concept of ”fake news”. This concept refers to the spread of misinformation either via news media or via social media, its purpose being to win something financially or politically. Fake news usually appears on Facebook newsfeed, as the easiest way to click on the appealing headlines. The fake news process may involve just an eye-catching headline or an entire invented story which tells everything except the truth, but it is based on clickbait and earning revenue from advertisement and number of visitors on their page. In this paper I will focus firstly, on the arguments brought by each side as part of the conflict, on one hand Donald Trump and on the other hand Hilary Clinton and her people involved in the issue. Secondly, I will use a quantitative analysis by creating an online questionnaire addressed to people who intensely use social media, trying to find out what is their opinion with regard to the social media effect on electoral campaigns and how they think we can be protected against fake news that are published during a campaign period. In my opinion, this subject is of great interest as there are involved powerful names who are now leading the world. Moreover, it is more than present as the mediatic scandal is still in a continuous evolution.