Sept. 24, 2024, 3:01 p.m.
More than 200 credentialed influencers at the Democratic National Convention took to social media to connect Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign to young audiences that campaigns have struggled to tap into. For some content creators whose whole brands aren’t politics, however, their videos and posts from the DNC were a change in programming for their audiences.
With the convention in the rearview mirror, the question is whether content creators will keep riding—and posting about—the Harris wave until November.
“I think that they are going to keep doing this. If they cared enough to go to the DNC and they've been courted all week, I'd be surprised if they didn't post at least semi-regularly between now and November,” Brian Rosenwald, a University of Pennsylvania scholar in residence who studies the intersection of history, political science, media studies, and communications, told National Journal.
Nadya Okamoto is doing just that. The content creator and co-founder of the menstrual-care company August has over 4.1 million followers on her TikTok account, @nadyaokamoto. She built DNC content into her typical day-in-the-life vlogs and period-centric interviews, including one with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer about her first period.
Okamoto plans to weave election content into her platform in the following weeks by talking about voter turnout online, and she posted about the debate. She said she would even turn out on the campaign trail if Harris’s campaign asked.
“It does feel like a tremendous responsibility to use [platforms] for things that you care about. And you know, for me, civic engagement is something that I do deeply care about,” Okamoto told National Journal.
Content creator Brian Acosta Arya also integrated DNC coverage into his regular content. Arya amassed 958,000 followers on his TikTok account @ltmotel for his 60-second storytelling videos about housing people in his motel, and he followed the same style of storytelling for his experience at the DNC.
Following the DNC, Arya connected with the campaign of his home-state senator, Sen. Cory Booker, to collaborate on election content. He booked an upcoming partnership with anti-gun-violence group March For Our Lives, and he will take first-time voters from his motels to the polls.
The Harris campaign is using content creators to meet voters outside of traditional news outlets, political and cultural strategist Ben O’Keefe told National Journal. A Harvard Youth poll published Tuesday found Harris with a commanding lead of 31 points over former President Trump with likely voters between the ages of 18 and 29.
"In just a few weeks, Vice President Harris has drummed up a wave of enthusiasm among young voters. The shift we are seeing toward Harris is seismic, driven largely by young women," said Anil Cacodcar, chair of the Harvard Public Opinion Project, in a news release.
Adults ages 18-29 are more likely to get their news on TikTok than any other age group, according to the Pew Research Center. This age group trusts information from social media sites almost as much as news from national outlets, another Pew Research Center study found.
“We don't get to choose the surrogates that people believe in. We don't get to choose what validates some and what validates others. And so as political strategists, we have to meet people where they are, and right now, where they are is on TikTok and on Instagram,” O’Keefe said.
Audiences who trust influencers to sell them products and services could come to trust the political candidates they support, Rosenwald said.
Deploying Okamoto and Arya, among the other over 200 credentialed creators, was a strategy prepared by the DNC months in advance, before President Biden dropped out of the race. However, Harris’s rise to the top of the ticket and embrace of internet meme culture solidified the role of influencers in her campaign, Maxwell Nunes, head of paid digital at the Democratic consulting firm SKDK, told National Journal.
Nunes added that the campaign will set its values and mission. Content creators, who best know how to communicate to their audience, will do the rest. It’s a strategy the campaign is investing in.
“I am confident that we’re going to continue to see influencers play a role in this election moving forward,” O’Keefe said, although he added that not being able to control the messaging from influencers can pose a risk to the campaign.
Rosenwald said the campaign should have vetted content creators credentialed at the DNC. However, with the virality of the campaign and other content creators who could jump on the Harris train before November, it may not have control over how its message is communicated to audiences in the next two months.
There’s risk on the content creators’ side, too, especially those whose brands aren't political content, if they keep promoting Democratic issues and candidates.
“The risk from their perspective is anytime anybody who's not in a political space gets into a political space, they are angering some segment of their audience,” Rosenwald said.
Despite the risks for both campaigns and influencers, content creators continue to post political content, though not at the rate they did at the DNC.
Arya posted a few videos from the DNC after the convention ended, ramping up his election content again with videos unboxing merchandise from Creators for Kamala and attending a presidential-debate watch party in New York City.
In her first TikToks promoting the Harris campaign since the DNC, Okamoto posted videos in which she decorated her apartment with Harris posters, created a debate drinking game, and ordered Indian food for her and her boyfriend to eat while watching the debate.
Enlisting content creators is just the latest campaign innovation designed to reach voters where they are, Rosenwald said. For now, it seems deploying content creators to mold campaigns’ messages and spread them to young audiences is here to stay.
“Campaigns have been looking to find people where they are, to reach them in new and innovative ways. … And this is just the latest iteration of that, the most modern spin on it,” Rosenwald said.
