“He has all of the mechanics needed for a massive, well-staged media operation,” said Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, a nonprofit media watchdog group. “Photographers, handlers, its size, scope and scale — all the ingredients are there. And he’s appearing in an environment where there’s no sole Democratic leader or counterbalance to Trump, who’s consuming all the oxygen in media.”

Mr. Zuckerberg has publicly denied that he is using the visits as a platform to run for public office. He has said they are a way to “get a broader perspective” to inform how he runs Facebook and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a limited liability company through which he plans to give away the majority of his wealth over the course of his life.

So far, Mr. Zuckerberg has made it to roughly half the states, including ones he has previously spent time in. The visits have plunged him into self-reflection, according to four current and former colleagues and people close to the chief executive who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly. The self-reflection is especially the case as Facebook has wrestled with more questions about its responsibilities and its role in the lives of its users, many of whom rely on the network for news and information.

The trips are part of a real-world education for Mr. Zuckerberg, who grew up comfortably upper middle class in the suburbs of New York, walked the elite halls of Harvard and then moved to Silicon Valley, where he became a paper multibillionaire by the time he was 23. (He is now 33.)