As predicted, the first televised debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump broke a record for the number of television viewers. But it also made a big splash with posts and discussions on social media.
However, in “reality,” the Clinton-Trump debate didn’t resolve the key issue in this media and political battle that has been monopolizing world-wide public attention: even though the Democratic candidate won the debate, the Trump show will go on. Even if a candidate wins on the computer screens and the digital platforms, there’s still no certainty about who might win the election.
The preliminary numbers from the major U.S. television networks indicate that at least 81 million viewers saw the debate live, a figure that beats the 80 million viewers for the famous encounter between former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan on Oct. 28, 1980.
The encounter between Hillary and Trump left the 67.2 million viewers who followed the 2012 debates between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney far behind. However, it did not manage to beat the great spectacle of the Super Bowl, which this year reached 111.5 million viewers, according to the Nielsen ratings.
Pay television saw an increase of more than 28 percent in its audience solely within U.S. territory, as was the case with CNN and Fox News.
Social networks have become the thermometer for the types of stories and the superficialities that have dominated public attention.
On Twitter, the hashtags #DebateNight and #Debate2016 were the most mentioned words on the night of Monday, Sept. 26. At least 5 million messages were launched on the twittersphere, of which 62 percent were focused on Trump and 38 percent on Hillary.
The issue mentioned most about Trump was not his anti-globalist politics, his racism or his apparent refusal to make his tax returns public. The issue that captured public attention was his “runny nose,” a reference to the tycoon’s supposed cold.
Among Latino-Americans, the most copied tweet was the one from former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, who briefly stole global attention away from the debate. Thanking the Democratic candidate for exposing Trump’s misogyny, Machado said (in Spanish), “Thank you, Mrs. Hillary Clinton. Your respect for women, and for our differences, makes you great! I’m with you.” It was retweeted more than 10 million times in less than an hour.
Machado reminded Trump of his ignorance, and her most retweeted message was this explanation by Trump of global warming: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.”
The two social networks with the largest worldwide audience – Facebook and YouTube — were television’s main competition. On Facebook, Trump dominated, with 79 percent of all posts. Spanish-language media like Univision and Telemundo broke the record for replies and visits with their simulcast of the debate on Facebook Live.
Some social networks, like Snapchat, inaugurated a new way to capitalize on the show the two candidates are putting on. It included a preliminary screening during the debate, in which users could take part around the theme “Debate Day.” It presented a place where the memes, parodies and ridiculous phrases that have made Trump the great fool of social networks could all proliferate.
The Aicial platform facilitates the monitoring of information based on Twitter and on the discussion generated in “real time” in relation to the topics of the debate. The fact-checking function on Clinton’s platform worked best. It checked Trump’s statements and claims and made it possible to have lively interaction among users.
Considering the digital platforms of the print media, The New York Times provided an intense discussion that captured the attention of the most well-informed group.
Some specialists say that this emergence of social networks into the sphere of the presidential debates is as chaotic as it is self-referential.
The inability to channel the conversation and the lack of interest on the part of the political centers in crafting themes and messages that go beyond the raucousness or the “reality” showmanship is still the major task when it comes to the advocacy of the politicians, analysts and journalists riding on the waves of the social networks.
Clinton won the CNN follow-up poll with 62 percent, compared to 27 percent for Trump, while the Republican candidate dominated in the Time poll, which had him at 59 percent compared to 41 percent for Clinton.
None of these numbers indicates that either Clinton or Trump has succeeded in breaking the statistical dead heat in which they’ve been mired, or that the percentage of undecided voters has gotten smaller.
The main effect is in the media. The overriding challenge remains political and economic, given the high degree of uncertainty.
In this media event, Trump’s unstoppable PR juggernaut has been slowed down for now, which will force him to radicalize or seek other people to speak for him in the post-debate period. One example of this is Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City, who spoke out for Trump in order to slow the damage to Trump’s image as unbeatable.
Clinton did her homework well. She put Trump on the defensive about his taxes, his misogyny and the lack of seriousness in his proposals, and questioned his branding as the exciting multimillionaire. But she didn’t deliver the knockout punch that a media circus of this type demands, the decisive victory that she needs in order to turn around the vote arising out of hatred and fear in an election about affirmative action that might enable a vision of a less fraught future.
Perhaps this is because neither of the two candidates is clear about the future they outline for the surviving post-cold war economic and military superpower, and they both remain trapped by a crisis that has polarized U.S. society and the rest of the world.
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