Posted on 11/08/2024 7:51:41 PM PST by TigerClaws
Moments after Donald Trump was declared the winner of the 2024 election, Dana White, the Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO, took the stage to thank those who helped deliver him the victory.
“I want to thank the Nelk Boys, Adin Ross, Theo Von, Bussin’ With The Boys and last but not least, the mighty and powerful Joe Rogan,” White said.
While half the country is reeling from the potential consequences of another Trump term, concerned about deepening social divisions, the dismantling of democratic norms and the normalization of far right extremism, there is one group that has emerged from this election cycle as a definitive winner: influencers.
Related Stories Billie Eilish and Donald Trump NEWS Billie Eilish Addresses Donald Trump Election Win: "Someone Who Hates Women So, So Deeply Is About to Be the President" U.S. President Joe Biden speaks about the results of the 2024 election in the Rose Garden on November 07, 2024 in Washington, DC. Former President Donald Trump defeated Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris. Biden pledged to work with the Trump team to ensure a smooth transition and invited the former President for an Oval Office meeting. NEWS President Biden Details Call With Donald Trump After Election Win, Promises Peaceful Transfer of Power The slew of influencers White acknowledged on stage are part of a sprawling network of online content creators that the Trump campaign centered in its media strategy, ultimately granting him unprecedented reach to win over voters and delivering him the election. “People have coined this the influencer election, and I think it’s the first of many influencer elections to come,” said CJ Pearson, national chairman of the Republican National Committee’s Youth Advisory Council, who helped the Trump campaign liaise with Gen Z influencers.
For the past two decades, the media landscape has been transforming. By nearly every metric, legacy media is in decline: average monthly unique visitors to websites for the country’s top 50 newspapers declined 20 percent to under 9 million in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to Comscore data, and the amount of time people are spending consuming legacy media content is getting shorter. The content creator industry, meanwhile, is ascendent. The influencer economy is set to surpass half a trillion dollars by 2027, according to a recent Goldman Sachs report, and 30 percent of consumers trust content creators more than they did six months ago, according to a 2023 report by Sprout Social, an analytics firm.
Throughout the election, both the Democrats and Republicans were forced to grapple with a radically transformed online news and media environment. Both parties courted creators by inviting them to their respective conventions, seating influencers front and center during rallies, funneling money to creators through political action committees and attempting to build up their respective candidates’ own followings across social media.
“This is the first election where the media landscape has really shifted,” said Loren Piretra, chief marketing officer of Fanfix, a creator monetization platform.
Influencers played a key role in manufacturing viral moments for each of the candidates. TikTok duo Carl Dixon, known as Casa Di, and his friend Steve Terrell, produced remixes of quotes from Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance that reached tens of millions across the platform, and content creators like @citiesbydiana helped mainstream the “Brat summer” trend through a steady slew of memes. YouTube stars the Nelk Boys and podcaster and comedian Theo Von hosted Trump and Vance on their respective shows, amassing hundreds of millions of collective views across platforms.
But while both campaigns worked overtime to court influencers, their strategies were divergent. The Harris campaign prioritized shortform clips, investing in quick videos and viral remixes on TikTok and Instagram. The Trump campaign went deep and long, investing heavily in longform YouTube podcasts and building partnerships with livestreamers. Ultimately, the latter proved wildly more successful.
The Trump campaign traveled to meet with various content creators, while Harris sought to make influencers meet on her own turf. When she and Walz filmed an episode of creator Kareem Rahma’s hit series Subway Takes, for instance, which is meant to be shot on a New York City subway, the Harris campaign insisted on filming it on a bus in Pittsburgh. When Harris was invited on Joe Rogan’s podcast, the campaign responded by requesting that Rogan leave his studio in Austin, Texas and travel to them. They also wanted to cut the format to an hourlong interview, rather than his notoriously long discussions that usually last three to four hours. The interview did not happen. The Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
“Harris approached the creators as media channels rather than as collaborators, which is the biggest misstep marketers make when working with influencers,” said Brendan Gahan, CEO of Creator Authority, an influencer marketing agency, who has done work with democratic politicians. “Trump immersed himself in creator culture, met them where they were and embraced their mediums.”
Trump’s focus on building parasocial relationships also proved critical. “Impressions are not created equal,” said Gahan. “The bonds creators have with their audiences is what drives meaningful engagement and shortform creators just can’t achieve those bonds to the same degree. Harris did not do [many] longform engagements or outreach.” Trump going on podcasts like YouTuber Logan Paul’s Impaulsive or Theo Von’s This Past Weekend, however, gave fans of those podcasts the opportunity to parasocially bond with the candidate.
Trump also created custom experiences for creators, building tight personal relationships with them. For instance, he didn’t just invite the Nelk Boys to his rallies, he invited them on his private plane and FaceTimed their friends together.
Xaviaer DuRousseau a conservative content creator based in Los Angeles, said that Trump’s work courting creators like TikTok star Bryce Hall or YouTube star turned OnlyFans creator Corinna Kopf, both of whom are deeply embedded in youth online pop culture, helped normalize supporting Republicans among the A-list Los Angeles influencer world.
DuRousseau said that creators used to worry about losing brand deals for supporting Trump, but things changed this cycle. “I used to get all these dirty looks and disbelief when wearing a MAGA hat. Suddenly, it’s people coming up to me with respect.'”
Jessica Reed Kraus, a conservative influencer who writes the Substack newsletter House Inhabit and has over 1.3 million followers on Instagram, said that Trump’s content influencer-packed election night party at Mar-a-Lago, which she attended, reflected the campaign’s commitment to the new media environment. “It’s a huge victory for us,” she said, “for those [online] who helped make it happen, and who got his message out. There’s a whole power shift. It’s just a testament to how much people have lost trust in the traditional media.”
But while the internet has democratized content creation, this new influencer-driven media climate comes with significant downsides. Because they view themselves primarily as entertainers, many content creators fail to adhere to traditional journalistic ethics or don’t disclose partnerships that present a conflict of interest. Influencers can also face pressure from the social media platforms they operate on to sensationalize content in order to perform well in algorithmically driven feeds.
Federal regulators have also failed to adapt to the new media world. During this year’s election cycle, campaigns and political action committees poured millions of dollars into social media agencies that partner with creators but received almost no regulatory oversight. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, a nonprofit legal and public policy institute, urged the FEC to update its rules to ensure more transparency around how candidates pay influencers last year. “Voters deserve to know who is seeking to influence them,” the Brennan Center wrote in their letter to the FEC.
Though the Democrats ultimately lost the election, many liberal creators ultimately gained a larger audience by covering the campaign and are walking away from this cycle with a significantly larger platform than when they started.
Keith Edwards, a Democratic strategist, launched a YouTube channel in May and gained over 207,000 subscribers by posting nonstop election videos, interviewing figures like democratic advisor Anita Dunn and Pete Buttigieg, going live during Trump’s assassination attempt and attending the DNC as a credentialed creator. Elizabeth Booker Houston, a political content creator and comedian, gained over 100,000 Instagram followers which led to her first comedy tour. Harry Sisson, a 22-year-old TikTok star known for pro-Democrat commentary, nearly doubled his audience as the election season unfolded. “I think [the election] was kind of a perfect storm that allowed folks like myself and other creators to grow our platform,” he said.
Experts on both sides of the aisle said that this election was a watershed moment for independent media. The shift towards a more digital and personality-driven news and information landscape will likely only accelerate under a Trump presidency, as his administration continues to shun traditional media. Throughout his first term, Trump leveraged online influencers to erode trust in democratic institutions, evade accountability and spread dangerous politically-driven misinformation.
Jess Rauchberg, assistant professor of communication technologies at Seton Hall University, said that regardless, political campaigns will be forced to adapt to this new environment and will “be chasing the podcasters and the independent news creators.”
“Legacy media is dying,” said Rauchberg. “I don’t think it’s dead yet, but it’s going to accelerate pretty quickly, and people are going to turn to alternative news sources, they’re losing trust in traditional news. I’m seeing that across the political spectrum. It’s not just conservatives or progressives or liberals or centrists or independents. It’s everyone.”
This move by Trump was thanks to his son, Barron.
Interesting the old folks thought 'movie stars' - people under 30 have no idea who most movie actors even are - or free concerts would do the trick.
The podcasts got over 100 million views and were big with younger voters - normally a demographic that (young and clueless) votes Democrat.
He won because he spoke to people. She hid.
Kamala was part of a tightly controlled pre-scripted campaign and it backfired.
Podcasts — sit down and talk for 3 hours, as Trump did with Rogan - requires someone who can get past soundbites and talking points and be mentally nimble enough to engage in an actual conversation.
Kamala couldn’t even handle questions from a lightweight Dem fan like Anderson Cooper, so her people kept her from going anywhere near a real conversation.
It was a bizarre campaign run in an ‘old media’ style. They ran pro-Israel ads in one state and anti-Israel ads in another. Even CNN called them out.
Musk controlling X was key though. That alone allowed the sharing of information easily and Dems controlled it back in 2020 along with Facebook, google, every major network and publication.
Podcasting is good for our side as we have logic, reason, informed candidates, and can make a clear case for our side.
Leftists rely on disinformation, misinformation, lies, slogans, name calling, and can’t engage in an actual debate. Watch Shapiro videos on college compasses where he shoots down dozens of libs. They can’t debate.
The softening of the American mind - Ivy Leaguers given crayons and safe spaces - means you can’t question their ideology or secular religion. Therefore, they’ve never engaged in a real debate and can’t handle it.
Trump’s Rogan appearance was a bit rambling but it showed he was a real person and not the ‘fascist’ looney leftists were trying to label him as - in a coordinated effort btw - and that helped. Vance did an excellent job.
Kamala was a terrible candidate. She ran as ‘change’ and new chapter but... she’d been in office for four years. It was a self-contradicting message and she couldn’t navigate it. She had no real plans and couldn’t engage in simple Q&As.
One example was that she had a town hall and it began with the audience being told that she wouldn’t be taking questions. !!! Pre-scripted, tele-prompter.
Biden’s team hid - for the most part - behind Covid and his fake campaign was able to push their man in office (15 million missing votes). Kamala didn’t really have that machine behind her and the independent voters and squishy middle American flip flop voters were seeing inflation, gangs, crime, insanity, and had just had enough.
p
She presented no plans other than unlimited abortions. Making the rich pay more and the middle class less without specifics. Saying you are lowing the price of groceries is not a plan.
I think after the Covid crap more people distrused government, or any one connected to it...And, demcommies ARE government.
She said she’d lower prices and would change things but she’s the VP. She’s part of the current problem.
Kamala has zero skills at retail politics. She couldn't speak to people because she didn't know how. She had no choice but to either hide or share her rally stage with A-list entertainers (for all the good that did).
She had no business being at the top of a presidential ticket. She's a DEI hire who's failed upward her entire career, having everything handed to her on a platter until it got to the point that her cluelessness was simply impossible to hide.
Everything about Kamala Harris was fake AF.
Democrats would've had a better chance had they ran good ole' Alvin Greene.
>> While half the country is reeling from the potential consequences of another Trump term
HAHAHAHAHAHA! Suck it fruitcakes! Reel! Reel! Reel! HAHAHAHA Seek help, you mentally ill drama queens!
150 years ago, people would stand for 3 or more hours in any weather to hear politicians debate one another. Newspapers were big and thick and chock full of articles of incredible detail and depth.
75 years ago, society shifted to radio and then TV news where some “trusted” figure provided a summary of the days events. Half-hour at night and five minutes at the top of the hour on your favorite radio station.
Eventually there was Twitter, which initially had a limit of 140 characters.
Independent media podcasts are a return to the in-depth information format again.
Exactly.
Not because of *influencers*.
Good analysis!
Bunch’s navel gazers.
This is a global phenomenon. 10 top nations had regime change
>> normally a demographic that (young and clueless) votes Democrat
Young, but apparently not as clueless as in past cycles.
According to exit polls, one of the noted phenomena is the shift towards the right in young people. Excellent!
>> Independent media podcasts are a return to the in-depth information format again.
VERY interesting. I never looked at it that way ‘til now. Thanks for the historical insight!
That five minute newscast on the radio includes a minute and a half of commercials, so all you really get is three and a half minutes of quickie news.
>> He won because he spoke to people. She hid.
Yeah, but at least part of it is President Trump’s correct perception as to HOW to speak to people. Rogan, McDonald’s, Garbage Truck, etc. Not “Meet The Press” or rigged debates.
It occurs to me that his choice of VP is another prescient communications move.
It's amazing how much of a paper tiger the abortion issue turned out to be.
Influencers got his message out.
A lot of young people only heard Trump speak when someone they follow on social media posted clips of him speaking.
He didn't win because of new media. He and his team understood the shift and went where the people are. Again, that is only one part of the reason for his victory. The socialists could have done the same thing and would have still lost. Even now they do not understand that the game has changed, and it isn't about new or old media.
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