Technology’s big role in President Trump’s impeachment trial

BOSTON — It’s been 21 years since the nation was witness to the impeachment trial of a president.

This time around, however, technology is playing a huge role in how the trial unfolds and how future generations will look back at history. By providing the population with a completely new way to experience and understand the trial, technology shows the contrast between President Trump’s trial and the 1999 impeachment of former President Bill Clinton.

Today, the way Americans took in Clinton’s trial and talked about it, seems like a completely different world.

“The media landscape that people are experiencing this impeachment trial in is completely different,” said UMass Lowell Political Scientist John Cluverius. “There was no Twitter, far fewer people were online - about half the country was online - and very few people had high-speed internet access."

For senators involved in the trial, the way they communicate with their constituents and express their opinions has changed now that most everyone has access to social media platforms.

“The Senate trial is kind of a weird event in that is happening in the US Senate and the senators aren’t able to say anything, so they are using Facebook, Twitter to talk to their supporters directly,” said Cluverius.

For perspective, it was the Clinton trial that pushed many to log into online platforms to express their political views.

“Our entire modern Internet activism space came out of the Clinton impeachment,” said Cluverius. “MoveOn.org started as a online organization dedicated to online activism opposing the Clinton impeachment - ‘move on’ from the impeachment.”

The evolution of and subsequent ease with which people can have digital access means everyone is able to share their opinions online with the click of a mouse. That, combined with a highly polarized political dynamic means reason, facts and evidence can easily get lost in the noise. Never has the spread of “fake news” been so rampant.

“The content people are seeking out is a lot less about what happens in the trial and a lot more about winning and losing,” said Cluverius.

Cluverius says that, by the end of the Clinton impeachment, only 1/3 of Americans admitted to paying close attention to the trial. Today, he believes the ease of access to live streams - Twitter feeds and TV coverage - means a lot more people will be paying attention to President Trump’s trial.

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