After years of sitting on the sidelines, content creators became part of mainstream political media this year, bypassing the traditional press and delivering election news, analysis and political commentary to their online fans.
Eighty-one-year-old Joe Biden presented on camera happy tiktok singer Harry Daniels. Bernie Sanders stumps for Kamala Harris on co-hosted Twitch stream An Anime Catboy VTuberDonald Trump collaborated with quintessential creative brothers, Jake and Logan Paul. Instead of making time for traditional sit-down interviews with the mainstream press, Harris and Trump relied on creators to garner votes and spread their campaign messages.
“With respect to my colleagues in the mainstream press—there's no value in talking to the New York Times or talking to the Washington Post in the general election, because they [readers] are already with us,” Harris's deputy campaign manager, Rob Flaherty, told Semaphore in December,
influence has increased 250 billion dollar industryMore than 70 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 say they follow an influencer on social media. A Pew Research survey last year foundA more recent survey, Published in NovemberFound that one in five American adults get their news from news influencers. This shift in media consumption was fueled by record spending on creator partnerships. Priorities USA invested at least $1 million in influencer marketing. harris campaign At least $2.5 million paid To management agencies that book creators for political ad campaigns.
This election, producers were everywhere – Republican and Democratic conventions, fundraisers, rallies and even parties at Mar-a-Lago. But the foundation for this maker takeover of political messaging was laid nearly a decade earlier. In 2016, Trump showed how social media platforms like Twitter can influence voters. Throughout the 2020 election, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg Spent more than $300 million on presidential election campaign Who recruited influencers and meme pages as paid digital surrogates and the Biden administration Creators are regularly invited At the White House for the briefing.
By embracing creators, politicians have begun to blur the lines between talking heads and journalists. Unlike journalists, news producers are often not beholden to editorial standards and adequate fact-checking – something that is one high-profile defamation lawsuit away from changing, but for now, it marks a difference. Many creators do the same work that journalists do – absorbing news, translating it and communicating it to audiences online. But in the online political ecosystem, many of them come across more as fans than objective observers. Some are clearly party workers. Nevertheless, they are often granted the same access as traditional press gets,