Episode Transcript
Morgan Sung: Okay, guys, I know we’re deep in fall now. We’re putting away the Halloween pumpkins, it’s getting a little chilly. And Election Day is right around the corner. But let me take you back to this summer. To the Democratic National Convention. It’s a chance for Democrats to seize the moment and present a fresh version of the party, under the leadership of for the first time in history, a woman of color.
DNC: We are honored to be a part of American history as we gavel in this convention and celebrate this historic nomination.
Morgan Sung: And in addition to the traditional press that’s covered the convention for more than 100 years, is this fresh class of media: Influencers. With just portable ring lights, tiny mics and their iPhones. They are content machines.
Jose Rolon:: I can’t believe we’re on the ground floor at the DNC right now.
Sassy confetti: And now I’m on.
Sassy confetti: my way to
Sassy confetti: United Center for the Convention tonight. Also, every Secret Service guy is so hot.
Morgan Sung: They were given media credentials and access that was pretty similar to what the traditional press was given. In addition to a few more perks like, a dedicated filming space, a creator’s lounge.
Makena Kelly: And on the first day there was a yacht party for that.
Morgan Sung: Makena Kelly is a senior writer at Wired who covers tech policy. She also covered the yacht party that the DNC threw for creators, as well as the “Hotties for Harris” after party, also for creators. And throughout the convention, she reported on this new dynamic of creator media in politics.
Makena Kelly: There is something that the DNC called the blue carpet, which is where, you know, the influencers were able to schedule time with different, you know, surrogates for Kamala and interview them. And then throughout the week, you know, they had access to the same buildings that I did as a reporter. The one thing I was incredibly jealous of with them having the the lounges was that they had places to plug in their computer, which was like my biggest struggle.
Morgan Sung: All this access for social media creators did not come without controversy.
Morgan Sung: I would love to talk about whether or not there were tensions between the traditional press and the creators that were in vited to the DNC?
Jose Rolon: Girl. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Yeah, it was, look, it was… there was some tension.
Morgan Sung: This is Jose Rolon. He is a wedding planner and TikTok creator who goes by NYC Gay Dad online. And he was one of the 200 creators invited to the DNC this year. He says that some claims about the perks that creators got were exaggerated.
Jose Rolon: I’ve been to things that are just way over the top with ice sculptures and people swinging from the ceilings and there’s caviar and all of these things, you know? This wasn’t it at all. Look, it was nice. It was like a room. There was some hot dogs, maybe some chips. And then there was, like, bins of sodas for you to have, right? But I think the stuff that was written about that there was this over-the-top elaborate steak and all this other stuff, like none of that existed.
Morgan Sung: Jose also says there is tension up in the high balcony levels of the United Center. That’s the stadium where the DNC was held.
Jose Rolon: What ended up happening is that there just didn’t seem like to be a lot of enough seats for everybody. But we put our seats, our stuff down, and then we went ahead to film stuff to do a lot of content. And then when we came back, our stuff was gone. Like, my bag was gone. Some of my equipment was gone.
Morgan Sung: Oh No.
Jose Rolon: And then there were people that were in our seats. What was happening is people the staff at United were taking some of that stuff and just putting it away into lost and found. And then the press was sitting there and and perhaps vice versa was happening. I’m not a journalist. I would never want to be a journalist. It’s a hard job. It’s I love being a wedding planner. I love doing content creation. I do love talking about this election. But there is a way that both can coexist very easily. And like as content creators, we were leaning on them to help us and to educate us. And they were looking at us like we were just these imbeciles.
Morgan Sung: Influencers at the DNC racked up a combined 350 million views across social media over the 40 long convention. That’s more than four times the amount of viewers that tuned in to watch it on TV. Both traditional news media and creators are vying for the same space, not just physically at the DNC, but also on the internet and the larger information ecosystem. And although creators who were invited to the DNC weren’t paid to be there, this new industry of political influencer marketing is flush with cash. So what are the rules in this new world of political media? Are there any?
Morgan Sung: This is Close all Tabs, a special series from KQED. I’m Morgan Sung. I’m a tech journalist. You’re chronically online friend, and your guide to the weirdest and most fascinating corners of the internet. Together, we’re diving into election memes, disinformation campaigns, political influencers, and we’ll open as many browser tabs as it takes, all to better understand how the digital world affects our real lives.
Morgan Sung: To start, we need to talk about how influencers became so important to politicians. Let’s get into it. Time to open a new tab. The White House Influencer Army. Back in 2021, the Biden administration recruited influencers as part of a public health initiative to fight misinformation and get the word out about the new Covid vaccine. They got TikTok creators, twitch streamers, YouTubers who posted selfies with their vaccine cards and made informational videos.
Makena Kelly: When Covid happened and everyone was inside and was nearly impossible to do, traditional politicking and doing traditional things that you would do for an election, they started building out this vast influencer network and they took that with them into the White House. And, you know, some of these people are kind of like journalists who like do news online. And some of them, you know, we recognize them as like Harry Daniels, who just, you know, sings to people randomly and goes viral for that.
Harry Daniels: President Obama, can I sing for you? … We are the new Americana
Morgan Sung: And since then, creator outreach has been a key part of the administration’s digital strategy.
Makena Kelly: The internet has changed tremendously just in the last four years. Like even four years ago, I think you were able to send out a tweet as a campaign and everyone would see it. But now, you know, if they want to find these same groups of people like young people or people interested in abortion rights and stuff, the easiest way to do it is find a creator who’s focused on it and whose audience is like deeply engage with that topic. And I think that’s been the main goal of the White House when it comes to approaching influencers.
Morgan Sung: In 2022, the administration started inviting specific influencers to special White House briefings like on the war in Ukraine, and when the Inflation Reduction Act passed. Last year, the White House kicked it up a notch and debuted a dedicated briefing space on Zoom again, unpaid. It’s kind of like a virtual press briefing room specifically for influencers. And then earlier this year, the White House hosted its first creator economy conference to talk about A.I. privacy and the power of influence.
Joe Biden: Look, my staff tells me that the creative economy is valued at $250 billion. But you breakthrough. You breakthrough in ways that I think are going to change the entire dynamic of the way in which we communicate. And that’s why I invited you to the White House because I’m looking for a job.
Morgan Sung: That $250 billion valuation that President Biden referred to? It’s expected to double by 2027, according to research from Goldman Sachs. And when it comes to marketing, creators are incredibly valuable, not just because of the number of followers they have, but also for the relationships they foster with their followers.
Makena Kelly: If you have this kind of, you know, pseudo parasocial relationship with this person online, you may be more likely to go out, register to vote, vote for someone in specific. You know, the Biden campaign might try and put an ad in front of your YouTube video, but that’s not going to get you to sign up to vote, right? Whereas someone like maybe Hasan Piker, who has this dedicated fan base.
Morgan Sung: Piker is a political commentator and streamer popular with young people. McKenna explains he has more than just a dedicated fan base. It’s also his community.
Makena Kelly: I think the community aspect is really important with a lot of these creators where these people are interacting together all the time. They’re in discords. They’re holding each other accountable for things. You know, they’re encouraging others to do things. And so I think it is, you know, really powerful. And that’s where all the money is going.
Morgan Sung: How effective is creator marketing when it comes to politics?
Makena Kelly: Well, if you talk to donors, PACs, campaigns, it’s necessary at this point. There’s a growing cottage industry of um political start ups, at least in the Democratic tech space of building political influencer management companies having these direct connections to the White House and bringing these people on specifically because they’re going to make these connections with, um, you know, D.C. politicians, etc..
Morgan Sung: With the DNC and the White House, those creator events and partnerships are, for the most part, unpaid. But through this growing cottage industry that Makena mentioned, there is a lot of money flowing through D.C. to influencers. How does this process work, exactly? And is there anyone in charge of reining it in? New tab. Political Influencer Marketing.
Morgan Sung: Both the right and the left employ influencer marketing. An earlier example is back in 2020, when Mike Bloomberg ran for president and paid meme accounts on Instagram to give his campaign some clout.
CBS San Diego: Several are made to look like a direct message conversation between Bloomberg and social media influencers. In one, he asks for help to make him look cool for the Democratic primary.
Morgan Sung: And their posts included captions that said “Paid for by Mike Bloomberg”, which definitely did not make him look cool. They did post in support of him, but it backfired. Spectacularly.
Kapwing meme review: The only comment you see is, “There’s still time to delete this,” with over 4,000 likes. Kind of gives you a pulse on the community reaction to these meme pages taking money from a presidential candidate.
Morgan Sung: Political influencer marketing has matured a lot since then. By the midterm elections in 2022, we saw a lot more sponsored political content from influencers.
Makena Kelly: I do think the thing that’s changing now is incorporating that message into the content that these people are already creating and making it almost seamless, making it feel, you know, as it’s just part of their platform instead of something that’s being injected into it.
Morgan Sung: The majority of these partnerships are through influencer agencies. These agencies already have connections both in the political world and in this rapidly growing creator economy. They’re basically a middleman between PAC’s – political action committees – and creators. Makena says in some ways, it’s not that different from how any brand partners with influencers. So if a makeup brand wants a beauty influencer to review their latest lip gloss, they’ll probably start by reaching out to an agency which will connect them with an influencer. They’ll negotiate a rate and number of posts like one Instagram post, one 2-minute TikTok, and a shoppable link to the product in their post. And once they’re posted, with a hashtag or caption indicating it’s a sponsored post, the influencer gets paid. But there is a key difference with political marketing. They do not have to disclose that it’s an ad!
Makena Kelly: As you know, as compared to like the FTC and having to regulate, you know, having hashtag ad or ad place somewhere sponsored, whatever, in some social media posts, there are no rules from the FEC, whatever, to disclose that. I hate this term, but it is still very much like the Wild West.
Morgan Sung: The Federal Trade Commission, F-T-C, requires anyone who posts online to disclose when their content is paid for by a sponsor or advertiser. But the Federal Election Commission, that’s F-E-C, who’s in charge of enforcing campaign finance laws, does not have the same rules. Last year, the FEC ruled that influencers or political organizations only have to disclose that they were paid to post their content in one specific situation. That’s if they paid a social media platform to promote it. So, for example, when you post on Instagram from a business account, you can pay a fee to boost the post so more people see it. That’s the only time you have to disclose sponsored political content. But if you’re just posting to your own channel, to your own audience, and not paying for that extra boost in views, you don’t have to tell anyone that you’re essentially posting a political ad.
Makena Kelly: It is a bit of a black box. You wish that at the end of a video on TikTok, if someone is working with a campaign or something, they would say “this video was sponsored by” like we see on TV or on radio, right? Where this was paid for by the Trump campaign. But that’s not happening.
Morgan Sung: Some of these organizations do require influencers as part of their contract to disclose that the posts are paid. The biggest Democratic super PAC is Priorities USA. They launched a creator partnership program earlier this year, and influencers that work with them have to include the hashtag “Priorities Partner” in any sponsored post. But a lot of these deals fly under the radar. Like last year, when Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton faced impeachment, there was this influx of Gen-z influencers suddenly rallying behind him online. This was not organic support. It was content paid for by a company called Influenceable – they recruit young conservative influencers to spread right wing talking points. The post about Paxton, who was acquitted, didn’t disclose that they were ads.
Morgan Sung: It’s not just American super PACs working with these agencies. Anyone with enough money can partner with them. You may have heard of a company called Tenet Media in the headlines recently. The company was a sort of right wing influencer super group that included pretty big names like Tim Poole and Benny Johnson. Their content followed typical far right talking points — complaining about illegal immigrants and critical race theory and trans rights — that kind of thing. But they were also oddly fixated on Ukraine.
Tim Poole: Ukraine is our enemy being funded by the Democrats.
Morgan Sung: Well, Tenet media wasn’t pushing these ideas for free. According to a federal indictment, they received $9.7 million from Russia today, the news network backed by the Russian government. Tenant media posted hundreds of videos that the Department of Justice says were, quote, often consistent with a government of Russia’s interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions, end quote. Look, we as humans love sensationalized content. It keeps us hooked. And it’s very easy to take advantage of that.
Dr. Jo Lukito: Specifically because of this idea of what’s called push and pull media.
Morgan Sung: Dr. Joe Lukito is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on political communication and disinformation.
Dr. Jo Lukito: So when we talk about pull media, it’s when you actively seek out a media or a piece of medium. So say like you’re going on Netflix and you want to watch a TV show, you make a very conscious decision to seek out what you’re looking for. That’s really different from our social media algorithms today, which tend to be push media. So rather than us seeking out that information, that content is served to us through some sort of social media algorithm.
Morgan Sung: Like the way that TikTok’s For You Page just feeds you videos in this endless scroll.
Dr. Jo Lukito: And this is by design. Social media platforms want you to stay on their platform. So they will introduce you to new influencers and new content that they think you might like but not necessarily know about yet. And so if we have these social media algorithms that are specifically geared towards keeping us on the platform and propagandists or disinformation actors know that they can leverage or exploit these social media algorithms to advance sensationalized disinformation. What we get is this really tricky cycle where disinformation actors or propagandists are using and leveraging influencers to promote highly sensationalized pieces of disinformation that then reach this large influencer audience. And so what we see is that these propagandists are both taking advantage of the social media algorithm, as well as the influencer industry, and the combination of those two contributes to why we see so much of this political misinformation and disinformation.
Morgan Sung: Okay, well, if anyone can swoop in and pay influencers to spread messaging that, you know, weakens our very concept of democracy, then why aren’t political ad disclosures required? I mean, this seems very dire! We’ll open a new tab on that after this break.
Morgan Sung: All right. New Tab. F-E-C Influencer Political Ads. Remember, you only have to disclose political sponsorships online if you paid the social media platform to show it to more people. The F-E-C is in charge of political advertising while the F-T-C regulates any consumer ads. But what’s the difference between the two? Why does it even matter? To get into this, I called Dara Lindenbaum, who’s been an FEC commissioner since 2022.
Dara Lindenbaum: Well, there are a few big differences and number one would be the First Amendment and how the First Amendment controls and really restricts our ability to regulate political speech. So that’s really the big one. And that’s the big thing that we all operate under when we try to regulate here, we have to make sure we’re not violating the First Amendment.
Morgan Sung: Lindenbaum says there is potential for stricter regulations.
Dara Lindenbaum: I absolutely have a huge concern about, you know, foreign influence. I’m also absolutely concerned about the First Amendment and not creating a system where, you know, people cannot express themselves the way they’re constitutionally allowed to do it. But again, I think it is an area that we can absolutely regulate in. When somebody is being paid to do something, that is an area that we can regulate in here.
Morgan Sung: But when it comes to dealing with social media ads, Lindenbaum says the FEC’s power is limited.
Dara Lindenbaum: We can only act based on what Congress tells us we can act. So they create the laws, and then tell us to go create the regulations that implement those laws. And right now there isn’t an agreement, I would say, that the regulations control what influencers do here when they are putting out content on their own channels without promoting it.
Morgan Sung: Do you think that the FEC will revisit this issue in the near future?
Dara Lindenbaum: I don’t think it’ll do it on its own. I’m not sure. I think it will depend on Congress. I don’t think there’s a big appetite to, you know, push this into and have, you know, essentially a stalemate with limited resources, um, without thinking this through and without a push from Congress.
Morgan Sung: The FEC decided back in December last year that they wouldn’t touch sponsored influencer content. And when they made that decision, two commissioners actually published a letter criticizing their own agency for not taking a stronger stance. They said that the problem isn’t that influencers are taking these paid deals — it’s that the public doesn’t know. And since influencers are already familiar with sponsored content roles, requiring the same rules for political posts wouldn’t be very different for them. In fact, some states are already taking action on this. California passed a law last year that requires people to disclose, but only when it comes to content about specific candidates or ballot measures. The Texas Ethics Commission just ruled that influencers have to tell followers if they are paid to make any kind of political statement. But there’s one more wrinkle here, if we just zoom out a little bit more. The power to actually enforce regulatory laws like this has been weakened by a Supreme Court ruling from earlier this year. For the last 40 years, federal agencies had a lot more power when it came to interpreting laws and deciding how to enforce them. There’s this legal doctrine called Chevron deference – it comes from a 1984 Supreme Court case. And it basically says that, if Congress passes a law and any part of it is unclear, agencies fill in the gap and interpret what Congress meant, not judges. The idea is that agencies are experts in very specific fields. It’s like how the Environmental Protection Agency would know more about the minutiae of air pollution particles than a federal judge would. And when it comes to policy making, Congress doesn’t always have the time or expertise to deal with every single detail and legal question. So they delegate to agencies to figure that out. Chevron deference gave agencies a lot of room to create and implement rules without the court stopping them from making policy choices. Well, the Supreme Court killed Chevron deference this year. And in overturning that 1984 decision, they stripped federal agencies of a lot of their rulemaking power. But while the government works out, keeping this industry in check falls on social media companies. So what are they doing about this? That’s a new tab. Social Media Political Ad Rules.
Morgan Sung: Every social media platform has completely different policies when it comes to political ads. And because of that, Dr. Lukito says it’s even harder to regulate the space and keep track of advertisers.
Dr. Jo Lukito: This is not a decision I think we should be leaving up to social media platforms, especially in a media ecology that has so many social media platforms.
Morgan Sung: YouTube and Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, allow political ads. Meta actually has specific roles for political brand deals now, thanks to that whole Mike Bloomberg fiasco. X, or Twitter, as many people still call it, actually lifted its ban on political advertising when Elon Musk took over. However, the site still bans political paid partnerships – those deals with influencers. TikTok and Twitch – the platform for streamers – ban political ads completely. But there are a few issues. Even the most well-intentioned rules around political sponsored content aren’t 100% enforceable. Twitch and TikTok both have very robust moderation, but banned content gets through all the time. These social media platforms will take down posts that don’t properly disclose that they’re ads, but users usually have to report it first. And moderating on this case by case basis is not very efficient.
Dr. Jo Lukito: And it also doesn’t stop these disinformation actors or unwitting political influencers from pushing that content on another platform that does not have those regulations, right? And so it creates both this sort of inconsistency, but even worse, this lack of transparency, so that when platforms are doing this sort of regulation, we can’t assess whether they’re doing a good job or not because we, how are we to know if there’s no transparency?
Morgan Sung: Dr. Lukito says that Metta actually does something that should be the standard on social media. It’s their ad library. Anyone who purchases ads on Instagram or Facebook has to register with this publicly available archive, which shows who paid for the ad, how many people saw it, and how much they spent on it. Meta is actually pretty transparent when it comes to dealing with content that isn’t allowed on their platforms like violence or nudity. And Dr. Lukito says that all platforms should be just as diligent and transparent about political content.
Dr. Jo Lukito: Not just transparency around what those regulations are, those content moderation regulations, but transparency in terms of how those decisions are being made. And that’s true broadly about internet communication, right? So Facebook, for example, has like an oversight committee that makes decisions on when certain types of content gets removed or not. We also see these large social media platforms have uh some sort of explanation for how they moderate content, whether it’s coming from content moderators they hire or flags that are coming from users. And I would really like to see that level of transparency, not just be applied to porn or violent content, but also be applied to political content, right? It’s not just about regulating it, but having transparency so that any citizen can go on Facebook or go on a TikTok website or page and just learn like, here’s what the regulations are, here are the specific steps in which we, you know, regulate and remove political content if that’s what they do.
Morgan Sung: Will these companies actually make an effort to be more transparent, though? Who knows. Unless it directly benefits them financially, they don’t exactly have an incentive to be better. Okay, let’s bring it back to where we started – all that drama that was brewing between traditional “journalists” and content creators. For one thing, the total lack of regulation and transparency in the influencer world, definitely contributes to that friction. And there’s a big difference in norms between the two worlds. The journalism industry has a system of editors and fact checking processes and editorial standards that keeps reporters in check. Granted, it’s not always perfect. Newsrooms make mistakes all the time. But it’s still more support than when a lot of influencers who make political content have. They may have a manager or agency handling their brand deals, and maybe some assistance when it comes to putting their videos together, but there’s no real industry standard for content the way that there is with journalism. And without any rules from the FEC, what they post– and disclose — is really on the creator’s personal standard. Still, people in both groups are starting to acknowledge that there is a lot they can learn from each other. Like Jose, the wedding planner who we heard from at the very beginning of this deep dive.
Jose Rolon: I think sometimes when politicians, when they see you and they’re automatically on the defense and they’re ready, they’re ready to give you a scripted response. But when it feels like someone that is relatable, I think their guard down is a little bit more and they’re more willing to just open up and really share from something that actually feels a little bit more personal versus than, you know, any of the scripted response. Look, I think you saw that some of the creators were not shy about asking about the war in Gaza and Palestine. I think for them to not be shy and ask them really difficult questions, whether if it was this or, you know, other hot topics around reproductive rights and so many other things that are really hot buttons right now, it was really wonderful and beautiful to see. I think there’s still this misconception with creators. We’re just a bunch of goofball dancers or, you know, our stuff doesn’t really matter. Like, there’s so many ways we can help journalists, just like, you know, there’s ways that, you know, they can help us too.
Morgan Sung: And as Wired reporter Makena points out, journalists can’t necessarily share political opinions the way that creators do, but they can show more of themselves online.
Makena Kelly: What I like to say is that, I think what creators have taught journalists is that we need to be more than just like black and white text on a, you know, byline. If we want to be able to earn that trust back that I think voters now have replaced oftentimes with news and political creators, then we have to show more of ourselves and more of our process and take readers along for that ride in a similar way, whether that’s writing, you know, a newsletter or doing TikTok or whatever works for you, right?
Morgan Sung: And I know this all sounds pretty bleak. The absence of government regulations, or individual social media site rules, or leaning on each creator’s personal conviction. But Makena reminded me of something that’s a small comfort in this Wild West of the internet. There is one more force keeping creators accountable when it comes to any kind of content.
Makena Kelly: You know the one thing that’s regulating this space and this is what it’s been like online forever, uh, is communities. It’s communities of people holding other creators accountable. These creators get into little spats, there’s all this drama, they sicc, you know, each other’s followings against each other. And that seems to be like one of the biggest ways that change happens in the communities when it comes to disclosures and things like that.
Morgan Sung: Now, obviously, a system of online communities demanding transparency from the creators they follow, doesn’t compare to actual regulations or effective moderating. But it is a start. Influencers tend to be pretty open to listening to their followers. And it’s bigger than just public shaming. These call out posts and community spats actually do, sometimes, foster change. Like when drama among streamers led to the crackdown on gambling content online. But that’s a deep dive for another day. For now, let’s close all tabs.
Morgan Sung: Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios, and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. Our managing producer is Chris Egusa. Our producer is Maya Cueva. Jen Chien edited the series and is KQED’s director of podcasts.Original music and sound design by Chris Egusa. Additional music from APM. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad]. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager. Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer.
A special shout out to the team at Political Breakdown for letting us share our episodes on their feed. And special thanks to founding producer Xorje Olivares. We’d love to hear what you think about the series! Hit us up at podcasts@kqed.org, that’s podcasts with an “s.”
Thanks for listening!
