Brian Edward’s “Trump from Reality TV to Twitter, or the Selfie-Determination of Nations” argues, “we are witnessing a shift in a sustaining if fraught relationship between culture and politics, between what has been called soft power and hard power” (28). Edwards points out that “the history of technology and society itself has long been central to politics” (idem), from the Industrial Revolution to the popularization of the printed press. For the author, digital technologies relationship to new social forms is directly implicated to both the rise of global populisms and what he calls “the selfie-determination of nations”.
The selfie-determination of nations refers to “a digitally mediated, imagined community in which individual citizens, bots, and trolls exist side by side. [And] It is at times difficult to know who is real and who is a digital creation (39). Although a bit simplistic, Edward’s argument is a pungent one. The author recognizes the impact of globalized economies in the way we communicate but it fails to extend his analysis outside US-politics. The rise of global populism is rendered as an American “cultural export”, without any thought given on how American neoliberalism is slowly turning into a neofascist wave around the globe, a transformation led by economic insecurity and cultural scapegoating.
Following Edward’s “exportation” argument, Jair Bolsonaro, “the trump of the tropics” as he has been called by US-media, is certainly following Donald Trump’s media strategy, with a more explicitly fascist approach. Like Trump, he uses twitter to communicate with his followers, where he is always in control of the narrative. Manipulation by bots and trolls organized action is becoming ever more common, actually interfering on how people perceive politics, and posing a dangerous threat to democracies all around.