Sunday Snapshot 11/13/16

Twitter tantrum: Social media has played an unprecedented role in this year's U.S. presidential election, and could play an even more important one now that the votes are in. This week – the first in which we've experienced Donald Trump as president-elect – has shown what the platform can reveal about our new lived reality, and one of those revelations is just how unstable, contradictory and potentially dangerous Trump could be in his new office.

Earlier this week, Trump tweeted two things about ongoing protests opposing his presidency: One, a complaint with a suggestion that the people participating in them weren't acting from a place of genuine concern. The following morning, he tweeted a seemingly contradictory sentiment, extolling his "love" for the very same demonstrations.

Following that mercurial series of Twitter missives, Trump then told CBC' 60 Minutes (in a preview of the full interview which airs today at 7 PM ET) that he would "be very restrained" on social media as president, if he "use[s] it at all." But not long after, Trump's Twitter account became more active than it has been since his election, beginning with two tweets decrying the New York Times and their "very poor and highly inaccurate coverage" of his camp gain and election. Trump then praised some Republican well-wishers, before returning to an NYT attack, which again confuses the facts of what was actually said by Trump. The criticism, levied by someone with as much potential power as Trump, represents a serious threat to First Amendment rights.

Meanwhile, the president-elect's social media accounts have been deafeningly silent on anything related to the many, many accounts of hate crimes being perpetrated in the U.S. following his election. Critics are calling for Trump to denounce said crimes, noting that all he's denounced thus far are a reputable and storied media organization, and protests organized lawfully by concerned U.S. citizens. Yet all we've heard on the subject so far from the Trump camp is an assertion from Republican congressman and House Speaker Paul Ryan to CNN that the people behind these crimes that Republicans "don't want them in our party," and that Ryan is "confident Donald Trump feels the same way."

Trump's behavior on Twitter is terrible by the standards of your average user-turned-troll, not just when measured as the work of the next U.S. president. The level of pettiness needed to bad mouth a legitimate news organization like the New York Times publicly after the race is actually won is astounding; and silence on issues of safety and decency, especially given his reach and audience, is unforgivable.

Through all of this, Twitter is shining a light on a U.S. president elect's mental state and political priorities like never before. That may not balance out the role it and other social platforms have had in providing a vector for misinformation and harassment, but it does mean we can point to evidence directly from the source when talking about the imminent danger resulting from this election.