Framing the Campaign: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of Issue Ownership in the 2024 Campaign Commercials of Trump and Harris on X

Abstract

The prevalent consumption of social media and the new era of complex, multilayered political discourses that involve many implicit tactics on social media platforms are worth examining to improve the knowledge about this field. The aim of this study was to examine and explore the manifestation of issue ownership in the discourse of Donald Trump’s and Kamala Harris’ campaign commercials during the 2024 US presidential elections. A mixed-method approach was used to select and analyse all the campaign commercials related to the 2024 US presidential elections, which were obtained from the official library (The Living Room Candidate), to identify every political aspect or concept that may reveal the strategised messaging that was intended to claim ownership over certain issues through the use of theories and concepts such as agenda setting, framing, priming, and a multimodal discourse analysis (MDA). The distribution and frequency of the emphasised issues in each commercial was measured to produce a hieratical listing of the issues that received the most emphasis to strengthen the study’s approach quantitatively. The quantitative findings showed that Donald Trump focused on Republican-oriented ownership issues, such as immigration, whereas Kamala Harris focused on several Democratic issues like reproductive rights while still trespassing on the territories of Republican issues. The qualitative analysis demonstrated the distinct implementation of agenda setting, framing, priming, and multimodality; while Donald Trump was found to be manipulating these strategies negatively, Kamala Harris used these strategies to communicate more positively. This study contributes to this field of interest by providing insights into the complex and ever-changing world of political campaigns and communications.