In the United States, there is now a fierce political struggle over social media influencers.
This is evidenced by the fact that the Democratic Party has invited no less than 200 social media influencers to its party meeting that started on Monday in Chicago. This is the first time that influencers are invited.
Influencers have the same rights as traditional media. They also get to perform alongside the country’s top politicians and prominent celebrities.
The Democratic Party presented the influencers below with a promotional video in the messaging service X.
We found out what the influencers invited to the meeting are like and what the Democrats want them to do.
Young people do not trust traditional media
With the help of influencers, the Democratic Party tries to target young voters above all, says the PhD researcher at the University of Turku Mila Seppälä.
Seppälä, who studied social media activism in the United States, emphasizes that young people’s trust in traditional media has been declining for a long time.
– News coming through social media influencers is accepted more easily, and is trusted more than traditional media.
In particular, the video service Tiktok has grown in importance. About a third of American adults between the ages of 18 and 29 regularly follow news on Tiktok.
Young adults are a potentially large group of voters in the United States. In total, there are more than 40 million of them.
The content produced by influencers varies greatly: some talk about everyday topics, some publish strict political activism.
One of those invited to the party meeting is Nabela Noorwho has more than 10 million followers on Tiktok.
He mainly publishes very smooth videos, which depict family life, among other things. The videos often contain commercial collaborations.
With one on video however, he demands a ceasefire in Gaza. The aesthetics of the video are light smoothed like other videos, and Noor wears make-up when she speaks.
Seppälä considers this video category to be an important means of political communication, because make-up videos are very popular on Tiktok.
– In a way, the different elements of the internet come together quite naturally here, Seppälä says.
However, according to him, make-up videos do not go viral very easily, i.e. spread widely in different social bubbles. True viral videos are often humorous or ironic.
Participants carefully selected
Influencers invited to the Democrats’ party meeting do not receive campaign money from the party, that is, they can decide for themselves what kind of content they produce from the meeting.
However, the party has carefully chosen influencers based on applications.
For example Deja Foxxwho has well over a hundred thousand followers on Tiktok, has been working in 2019 Horrible Harris in the campaign.
Foxx has clearly political videos, but he also presents, for example, his party meeting outfits on Tiktok. On the first day of the party meeting, he was wearing by Stella McCarthy designed used dress.
Influencers usually also have a top theme that they specialize in. Carlos Eduardo Espina take a position on immigration issues, for example.
Espina has over 10 million followers and speaks Spanish in her videos. The language issue is significant, as there are an estimated 40 million Spanish speakers in the United States.
Harris’ social media campaign in high gear
President With Joe Biden still had difficulties in the summer to get influential influencers to support their campaign.
Harris’s campaign, on the other hand, has been on the rise in social media.
However, according to Seppälä, this is not due to a change in the social media strategy, as the campaign team has remained the same. It’s about the candidate. We are genuinely excited about Harris.
Seppälä talks about “vibes”, i.e. the atmosphere emanating from the candidate.
– If one content producer starts talking positively about Harris’s campaign, it might give others permission to talk positively about him, says Seppälä.
This creates a self-feeding cycle, and Harris’s campaign messages start to spread.
To some extent, social media campaigning is also haphazard.
Viral videos often go viral somewhat accidentally or unexpectedly. It remains the task of the campaign teams to grasp them and reinforce the messages.
In the video below, two young Democratic influencers participating in the party convention tell what they think about Harris’ campaign’s social media content: