Guest Lecture by Dr. Sara Polak (Leiden University): “Media Platforms Making Exclusionary Worlds – Trump and Truth Social”

In this lecture I will focus on the 'playful' affordances for in- and exclusion of minoritized groups on Truth Social, Trump's own social media platform, founded after he was banned from Twitter, Facebook and other mainstream platforms. Social media have never been public media - a fact particularly brought home after Elon Musk bought Twitter - in order to be able to allow Trump back onto the platform - and refashioned it beyond recognition. Around the same time, Trump began his own platform, which remains relatively small and yet allows him enormous reach, perhaps paradoxically through a policy (and politics) of exclusion. I will show how Truth Social is in many ways a reiteration of American whites-only playspaces, where few are admitted, but much is decided and played into existence.