Agenda setting and IR in the Twitter era - The Case of Donald Trump and the North Korean nuclear crisis

Sammanfattning: The aim of this thesis was to analyze and discuss how and why the traditional agenda setting process, as it is presented by Kingdon through the concepts of problems, politics and policy, can be seen in a new light of social media (tweets) and the concept of identity, by studying the case of American president Donald Trump and investigate his use of Twitter for agenda setting in the ongoing North Korean nuclear crisis. This thesis used a case study method to study the material of 28 tweets made by Trump about North Korea. The analysis revealed that Kingdon’s traditional agenda setting theory was useful for understanding the material, however an addition of looking at the concept of identity creation which is important within social media and International Relations (IR). The concept of identity helped to understand Trump’s agenda setting in a new light, where identity creation helped to discover an ‘us-and-them’ dynamic.