Trump’s political campaign: Strategies,tactics and media psychological warfare model [Kempen politik Trump: Strategi,taktik dan model perangsaraf media]

Media psychological warfare is instrumental in building the reputation and credibility of an individual,groups,organization or even political parties. undeniably,an organized and carefully planned media psychological warfare capable of achieving this wish. donald j. trump’s political campaign during the united states election,2016 have proven that he is a successful media psychological war strategist. by defeating experienced political veterans such as hillary clinton and barrack obama such phenomenon has encouraged an academic endevour to discuss this phenomenon. the objective of this research will focus on questions of 1) strategies 2) tactics and 3) model used by trump to win the election. this research used non-participant unstructured observation as the methodology and prioritize on the key question of ‘what can we know?’ from the observable reality. an experimental methodology that utilizes such initiative gave this research the flexibility of knowledge construction via the intervention of the researcher critical observation. news reports about trump and words such as ‘strategy’,‘tactics’,navigate the limitation and the outcome of the findings. the research found that straightforward and no holds barred strategies was consistently used by trump during his political campaign. whether answering harsh questions by reporters from the mainstream media or writing post on social media,the same strategies was repeteadly used. besides that,in term of the media psychological warfare tactics,the research found that there are five tactics used. although the tactics seems different,it has core uncanny similarities. these core similarities contain identical elementary motives of controversial and sensational speeches. in conclusion,all the tactics used have the capacity to boost trump’s social media reputation and popularity. controversial and sensational news reports by the mainstream media on trump are the primary reason that replenish trump social media contents and subsequently empower his political influence to win the united states election,2016. finally,this research proposed a psychological warfare model that demonstrate how trump used mainstream media and social media to champion his political campaign. © 2017,universiti kebangsaan malaysia press. all rights reserved.