This was a year of influential political takeover

After years of sitting on the sidelines, content creators have become part of mainstream political media this year, delivering election news, analysis and political commentary to their fans online — all while eschewing traditional journalism.

81-year-old Joe Biden serenaded on camera The delightful TikTok singer Harry Daniels. Bernie Sanders gets confused with Kamala Harris on a Twitch stream she hosts Anime Catboy VTuber. Donald Trump collaborated with creative brothers, Jake and Logan Paul. Instead of devoting time to traditional interviews with the mainstream press, Harris and Trump relied on creatives to canvass votes and spread their campaign messages.

“There’s no value — as far as my colleagues in the mainstream press are concerned — in the general election to talk to the New York Times or talk to the Washington Post, because those (readers) are already with us,” campaign deputy Rob Flaherty said. director harris, Semaphore said in December.

The influence has grown to A $250 billion industry. More than 70% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 say they follow an influencer on social media, A Pew Research study found last year. latest survey, Published in Novemberfound that one in five American adults gets their news from news influencers. This shift in media consumption has been met with record spending on creator partnerships. Priorities USA has committed at least $1 million to influencer marketing. Harris campaign Pay at least $2.5 million To the management agencies that book creatives for political ad campaigns.

This election, creatives were everywhere — Republican and Democratic conventions, fundraisers, marches, even parties at Mar-a-Lago. But the foundations of creators’ control over political messages have been upheld for nearly a decade. In 2016, Trump demonstrated how social media platforms like Twitter can influence voters. Throughout the 2020 election, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg He spent more than $300 million on the presidential campaign That recruited influencers and meme pages as paid digital surrogates, and the Biden administration Creative people were routinely invited To the White House for briefing.

By embracing creatives, politicians have begun to blur the lines between speakers and journalists. Unlike reporters, news creators are often not bound by editorial standards and substantive fact-checking — something that can only be changed by a high-profile libel suit, but which makes a difference for now. Many content creators work similarly to what journalists do, digesting, translating and delivering news to audiences online. But in the online political ecosystem, many of them appear more like fans than objective observers. Some of them are clearly partisan activists. However, they are often given access similar to… Traditional journalism gets.