When Donald Trump hired Breitbart News executive chairman Steve Bannon to lead his presidential campaign, many immediately wondered: what can we expect from the new Bannon-led campaign? And what is Breitbart News?

Bannon has been described variously as “the most dangerous political operative in America” and the “Leni Riefenstahl [a Nazi propagandist] of the Tea Party movement”.

To gain clarity following yet another Trump campaign shakeup, I read Breitbart exclusively for two days, eschewing all other news sources. (The Guardian included. Apart from its soccer coverage.)

It offered an insight into not just the popularity of Breitbart – the site boasted 31 million unique visitors in July – but also how it appeals to its readers. And it’s not as straightforward as you might imagine.

The first thing you notice when visiting Breitbart is its idiosyncratic presentation. Every headline is in capitals. It implies a sense of significance and dire urgency.

It screams at you. “THIS IS IMPORTANT,” is the effect. “THIS IS OUTRAGEOUS.” “THIS IS ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF THIS COUNTRY GOING TO HELL IN A HANDCART.”

The last of those points is an example of how well Breitbart knows its audience.

This doomsday approach makes it seem like Breitbart readers want to feel that everything is rotten. They want to feel irate. They want to feel that disaster is impending – unless their guys can fix it.

But compared to the caps-lock screaming, the actual articles are quite benign. They could have been published on a liberal news site. Look at this one from Wednesday, reporting on the response of Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, to Bannon being hired by the Trump campaign.

“Mook: ‘Only Fitting For a Bully Like Trump To Hire a Bully To Run His Campaign’,” it reads.

Mook did say that. It’s true. The article itself is opinion-free. It could appear on the Guardian. It merely quotes Mook directly. A later article on the same subject quoted Mook more extensively, then included a response from Breitbart at the bottom. That’s essentially what any news site would have done.

That’s not to say Breitbart is objective. It just pushes its rightwing message with a surprising subtlety.

An extensive profile of Bannon by Bloomberg Politics reveals some of that thinking. “Facts get shares, opinions get shrugs,” Bannon says. And that’s mostly how it works.

On the front page, at least, Breitbart presents readers with articles it knows will make them angry. The Mook article is a prime example – it gives readers an outlet to rip into liberal politicians and liberal media.

If Breitbart’s success is from publishing articles that it knows will upset its readers, the key is to publish the stories that present the perfect combination of facts to fuel rightwing anger. For example, a story about homeland security secretary Jeh Johnson, who visited Louisiana following the recent floods, saying Obama could not also attend because he has a “very busy schedule”. It is true – he did say that. But the article is illustrated with a picture of a smiling Obama on a golf course, and the text notes the president is “on vacation”.

For all the veneer of objectivity, readers are only presented with stories that further rightwing narratives. Reading it for two days, I learned a number of things I never knew. Many of them about Hillary Clinton.

I discovered that “a number of recent stories have focused on questions about Clinton’s health”.

According to articles presented by Breitbart, Clinton is tired and ailing. In a piece about flooding in Louisiana, I learned that Clinton needs “extensive rest over the weekends”.

From one headline, I learned that Dr Drew – VH1’s resident celebrity doctor – is “gravely concerned about her health care”.

The message is clear: Clinton is the elderly grandmother who comes round for tea and biscuits and then has to be driven home when she falls asleep in front of Jeopardy.

Apart from Clinton’s troubling health, I learned that there was a “new gun control idea”. The idea, according to the Breitbart headline, is to “take away guns from senior citizens”.

The story is actually presented straight. After an examination of the quotes, however, which came from an academic at Johns Hopkins University, the article didn’t match the bluster of the headline.

We don’t exactly know what to expect yet from the Bannon-led Trump campaign. But it’s a fair bet that it will be cleverly packaged, well liked by Trump supporters and not very nice.