Will compete with him Twitter American broadcaster Fox News? Right-wing commentators have joined the platform, but Republican’s chaotic start to campaign Ron DeSandis Yesterday Wednesday strengthened the arguments against Wednesday’s turn in this direction.

The Florida governor first appeared on Twitter as a candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and held a live debate with Elon Musk.

But the broadcast, which was watched by many hundreds of thousands of people, began 20 minutes later due to technical problems, mainly with sound.

“Destruction. Kill the bird,” Jason Kidd, head of the Association of Digital Media Professionals, tweeted, referring to the social network’s logo, commenting on the efforts of Musk, who bought the platform in October.

“He can’t do anything good. He cannot create the media. He has no data. Enjoy the silence, advertisers,” he added.

Fox News, which welcomed the GOP candidate soon after, ran a commercial: “Do you really want to see and hear Ron DeSandis? Tune in to Fox News at 8:00 pm.”

For Elon Musk and the moderator of the conversation, David Sachs, a Republican businessman, this “historic” conversation was a success.

“It’s amazing that people can hear directly from a presidential candidate (…) in an authentic and direct way,” the Twitter owner commented.

Musk’s provocative views and the return of many controversial figures to Twitter initially signaled a shift to the right for the social network, but now she appears to be professionally addressing conservative political content.

“New Fox News”

Tucker Carlson opened the dance in early May. The former Fox News host, with his extreme and often conspiratorial views, averaged 3.3 million viewers in 2022, the largest audience for a U.S. late-night cable show.

After leaving Fox News, he launched his new show on Twitter, “the last platform in the world that allows freedom of expression.”

When he posts a video on the platform, “it gets 80 million views (…) from a younger audience,” notes Andrew Selepak, professor of media at the University of Florida. “The choice is quick, especially if one is more interested in gaining influence than money.”

On Tuesday, conservative website The Daily Wire decided to air its podcasts on Twitter, including this podcast by Matt Walsh, a commentator known for his transphobic comments.

According to Matt Hertz, a researcher for the non-governmental organization Media Matters, Carlson’s departure from Fox News “created a vacuum (…) and it can be said that Elon Musk is trying to supplant Rupert Murdoch and become the new Fox News.”

The billionaire still insists that he wants to turn Twitter into “humanity’s digital public space” where free speech will reign.

He has virtually no qualms about insulting his critics and the mainstream media, to the point that some of them have left Twitter, including NPR, the national public American radio station.

“contradictory”

“I say what I want and don’t lose money,” Musk recently told CNBC.

But many advertisers have left Twitter, and its value has halved despite laying off 50% to 75% of employees. Musk needs a new strategy.

Musk is “taking advantage of the highly successful radio and Fox News talk show model, a lucrative ecosystem that conservative media has built over the past three decades,” said Katherine Brownell, professor of media history at Purdue University.

But content is “expensive and requires trust,” notes Roy Guterman, a professor at Syracuse University. “It will take another $40 billion to invest to build Twitter News and make it work.”

Musk recently announced that he had hired Linda Giaccarino, former head of publicity for NBCUniversal, to run Twitter.

“It’s contradictory,” Hertz says. The emergence of Carlson, The Daily Wire and DeSandis “allows for the development of a far-right user base, rather than monetizing it through ads.”

Apart from the possibility that more moderate users will leave Twitter.

“History shows that social media can die in many ways, but boredom dies most quickly,” commented journalist Charlie Worzel in The Altantic magazine.

^{Source: APE-MEB, AFP.}