President Trump’s Twitter account has been the subject of media scrutiny in the first year of his presidency, where Trump’s recent “stable genius” tweet in reaction to those questioning his mental fitness for office has come into focus in the last month.
CNN’s Chris Cillizza recently commented in his CNN.com column The Point reacting to Trump’s that Trump, “is a political creature of almost entirely id.” Breitbart’s Daniel Nussbaum framed the social media reaction to Trump’s stable genius tweet from Hollywood as “triggered”. Teen Vogue’s Melissa Moreno criticized the media’s various reactions to Trump’s tweet in a January 11 op-ed stating, “When language starts to involve hypotheses about mental illness, things not only get difficult and confusing, but downright dangerous.”
Tim Stock, the co-founder of ScenarioDNA, a global innovation consulting firm and adjunct professor at the Parsons School of design, is an expert in forecasting cultural trends and behaviors. Stock and his cohorts have found a way to clarify media speculation by employing scientific methodology and research to deconstruct Trump’s tweets through a combination of semiotics, consumer anthropology and data science called “cultural mapping,” a process that Stock himself has co-created. ScenarioDNA’s research into the tweets of Trump’s first 100 days in office through cultural mapping offers insight into the present and future implications of Trump’s mentality through his tweets, as well as offer how as civic-minded American citizens and the news media can benefit from becoming more literate in semiotic analysis.
“There’s an interesting aspect to Trump where it’s almost sort of hiding in plain sight,” Stock said about the genius tweet. “Where he essentially never has to be right, he has to bury himself in untruths so it doesn’t really matter.”
To see more of scenario DNA’s cultural mapping projects, click here.
Alex M Buono 