This Was the Year of the Influencer Political Takeover

After years on the sidelines, content creators became part of the political media this year, delivering election news, analysis, and political commentary to their online audience — all while ignoring traditional media.

Eighty-one-year-old Joe Biden was shown on camera a popular TikTok singer Harry Daniels. Bernie Sanders ran into Kamala Harris on a Twitch stream hosted by and anime catboy VTuber. Donald Trump joined the quintessential brothers, Jake and Logan Paul. Instead of spending time with the media, Harris and Trump relied on pollsters to boost polls and spread their message.

“There’s no point — with all due respect to my friends in many newspapers — in the general election for me to talk to The New York Times or talk to The Washington Post, because (readers) are already with us,” said Rob Flaherty, deputy campaign manager. harris leader, he told Semafor in December.

Influence has grown a $250 billion business. More than 70 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 say they follow an influencer on social media, A Pew Research study found last year. Another recent study, published in Novemberfound that one in five US adults receive news from influencers. This change in media consumption was met with a cost-effectiveness in relation to producers. Leading in the USA invest at least $ 1 million in marketing efforts. Harris campaign paid at least $2.5 million to regulatory agencies that book political advertising campaigns.

This election, creatives were everywhere—Republican and Democratic rallies, fundraisers, meetings, even parties at Mar-a-Lago. But the basis for adopting these political messages was strengthened almost a decade ago. In 2016, Trump showed how social media sites like Twitter can influence voters. In the 2020 general election, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg spent more than $300 million on the presidential campaign who recruited influencers and meme sites as paid digital media, and Biden’s administration customarily invited at the White House for a brief discussion.

By embracing creatives, politicians are beginning to blur the lines between talking heads and journalists. Unlike journalists, news producers often don’t focus on their content and fact-checking – which is a serious crime that can’t be changed, but for now, it’s a difference. Many producers work in a similar way to what journalists do—to copy, translate, and distribute news to the public online. But in online politics, most of them come as fans rather than observers. Some are party activists. However, they are often given equal access to what traditional journalists get.