Thread by @PaulHRosenberg

.@GeorgeLakoff described a 4-fold taxonomy of Trump's tweets. Scientists have now shown large-scale evidence of two of them in action, as I report for @Salon: 1/6
salon.com/2019/08/04/tru…

First, Trump's core use of deflection--attacking the "fake media" as cover for his own disinformation--was analyzed over a period of 9 months & 3 sub-categories were found: 2/6 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20…

Second, Trump's use of diversion was analyzed with respect to the Mueller investigation in a forthcoming paper by @STWorg & colleagues, which he described to me broadly thus (more details in story): 3/6

Scientist have also made sense of how different styles of disinformation relate to each other, so we can better understand Trump in context (story focuses on bottom half): 4/6

Plus, there's also understanding of Trump's unreachable base (and hence why press should stop fruitlessly fretting over them). First, why & when people trust a lying demagogue: 5/6 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00…
Second, financial crises boost rightwing parties: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

In short, scientists now know enough about "what the hell is going on" to provide the media with a vaccine against spreading Trump's toxic disinformation, and an understanding of reasonable goals. Read the whole story here: 6/6 salon.com/2019/08/04/tru…