Abstract
The problem in this digital age is the easily accessible channels of communication. The influence of social media has been ever-increasing, particularly in bettering democracy. However, scholars attribute social media to causing attempts to limit democracy, one of which being the Capitol Insurrection in 2021. Social media played a large role in organizing and storing data about the insurrection. Trump himself has posted encouraging the event multiple times throughout his 2020 campaign. The role of social media’s specific role in the riots is necessary to be analyzed because of its widespread nature. Another commonly attributed cause for the riot is religion. White Christian Nationalism is a political sect that believes that the United States should be juxtaposed to the promised land of Israel. This paper argues that Trump’s appeal to white Christian Nationalism was constructed with social media to cause the 2021 Capitol Riots by considering both religious rhetoric and offensive, zero-sum framing. Specifically, this argument is formed by comparing Trump’s rhetoric before and after the riot through a multitude of sources, including archived tweets on X (formerly Twitter), published journal articles, and news articles. In doing so, the implications extend beyond Donald Trump to the vast religious and social communities. Finally, this paper will discuss the implications of content moderation policies on social media—how the boundary between the First Amendment and dangerous misinformation might be managed. On one hand, it can be argued that any form of moderation is censorship, while the Capitol Riot shows the harmfulness of misinformation. Underlying this event is distrust in the electoral process, which will be briefly discussed as a future point of study.
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