There are numerous conflicting opinions across the nation and on social media when it comes to Donald Trump being elected as president.  Recently, anti-Trump activists seized the President‘s day holiday to organize “Not My Presidents Day” rallies in cities around the country. In the past, this holiday has always been a designated day to celebrate our past and present presidents.

            In the leftwing leaning blog entitled “How to Celebrate “Not My President’s” Day” the author is trying to appeal to a more liberal viewpoint in multiple ways. First, the blog title implies that the article will provide insight to the reader on how to celebrate “Not My President’s Day”.  In addition having a comedic visual of former President Obama and Joe Biden also appeals to liberal Americans by further highlighting the former administration lack of support for President Trump during the election. Also this visual’s underlying message conveys President Obama’s continued lack of support for Donald Trump. Therefore it is assumed that Obama supporters will not support President Trump as well.

            Social Media now plays a key role in politics but for this specific rally it was a major tool. The blog previously highlighted states the specific name of the Facebook group where people can go to gain more information on the rallies. This persuasive technique influences anti-Trump readers to visit the “Not My President’s Day” page, research the rallies on this Facebook page, and then possibly compelling the reader to partake in a local rally. The Facebook group inspires unity for all rally participants and clearly states rally locations.

            In contrast, “Limbaugh: ‘Not My President’s Day’ Protests an Abject Failure” is a right leaning blog site. The first sentence of this article states that the “Not My President’s Day” protests were a failure. People who have more conservative views and who did not partake or support the rallies will be convinced that the protests failed.  The use of statistics is a persuasive technique utilized greatly by the author.  Limbaugh explains although that the headlines claimed that thousands of people rallied, the actual  break down of protesters by each city show points out that each rally individually only had about seven hundred participants.  These hard facts further sway the reader because the numbers illustrate concrete evidence that the rallies were actually relatively small in size. 

            Once again social media is employed as a compelling persuasive tool to influence a person’s point of view. The blog site inserts the actual radio broadcast so the reader can hear Limbaugh’s passionate vocalizations along with actual videos of the rallies. However the only the comments featured are made by Trump supporters. The article acknowledges that “Yes there was a crowd of people rallying” but that not everyone there was supporting the rallies. The viewer is persuaded to believe that in the numbers not all of the people present were against Trump. This point further accent the fact that rally supporter numbers were actually small in size.  At the end of the article there is two buttons present, so that in one click the reader can share this article to Facebook or Twitter therefore making this blog easy to be shared and communicated.

            Each of the articles discussed have different viewpoints and employed social media to communicate information about the rallies that were held on President’s Day. Both of these articles used persuasive techniques to influence their target audiences. Ultimately, the media plays a huge part in getting both sides of the issue out to the public. There has been numerous protests for and against Donald Trump however the “Not My President’s Day” rallies are particularly interesting and depending upon your viewpoint can be viewed differently.