Celebrity and influencer impact
As we transition into fall and enter election season, Vice President Kamala Harris has incorporated the “brat summer” craze into her presidential election campaign, capturing the attention of younger voters.
Her team’s use of this branding started after Charli XCX posted “kamala IS brat,” on X, formerly known as Twitter, according to BBC. Shortly after this post, the Harris campaign’s social media platforms started sporting the neon green color and simple black font reading “kamala hq,” according to CNN.
The night of the presidential debate, Sept. 10, Taylor Swift publicly endorsed Harris, reaching the Instagram pages of her 283 million followers. Though not all of Swift’s followers are of voting age, instilling the importance of voting in those younger generations brings hope to the future political climate.
Former President Donald Trumpov has used his campaign to attract patriotism through his “fight, fight, fight” picture that circulated after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Trumpov has received endorsements from several celebrities, including Hulk Hogan who was at the Republican National Convention, according to Forbes. Other endorsements include Kid Rock, Dave Portnoy and Amber Rose.
The two contrary methods of campaigning are seemingly effective for both candidates, with their respective supporters trusting their words and posts.
According to Politico, the Democratic National Committee gave credentials to more than 200 content creators to cover the event, illustrating the impact that social media creators have had on the election.
Influencers’ audiences often push said influencers to use their platforms to speak up, with some partnering with HeadCount, a non-profit organization, to encourage their audience to register to vote.
Brittany Tomlinson, also known as Brittany Broski, teamed up with HeadCount by giving her followers an opportunity to win a free trip to meet her if fans registered to vote or checked their voting registration status, according to a post she made on her Instagram.
Misinformation
In a study conducted by the Pew Research Center, a survey showed the three most common ways that Americans get their election news: television, news websites or apps and social media. Of those surveyed, 20% said social media was their main way of consuming this news.
In the same study, “almost half of U.S. adults under 30 (46%) most commonly used social media for political news.”
X tops TikTok with 59% of those who use social media saying X is where they keep up with politics, according to Pew Research Center, with only 36% saying they use TikTok and 26% for both Facebook and Instagram.
In another study from the Pew Research Center, “about half of those under 30 say getting news is a major or minor reason they use TikTok.”
When browsing on X, users can typically expect to see more right-leaning views, as studies from the Pew Research Center show that Republicans on the app feel more “welcome” to sharing their views on the platform.
Misinformation has also plagued the internet long before this election season, but has been much more prominent regarding election coverage. Pew Research Center reported that 73% of U.S. adults said they see misinformation about the election somewhat often.
The social media platform with possibly the most rampant case of misinformation continues to be Facebook, with 75% of those users being 30-49-years-old, and 69% of its users being 50-64-years-old. 58% of U.S. adults 65 and over use Facebook, according to Pew Research Center.
According to a study done by Texas A&M Today, 23% of the 13 million Facebook image posts from August through October 2020 contained misinformation. They also found that 5% of left-leaning posts contained misinformation, 39% of right-leaning posts did.
These misinformed image posts that circulate on Facebook take up about 40% of posts on the platform.
“The misinformation we found on Facebook was highly repetitive and often simple. While there were plenty of images doctored in a misleading way, these were outnumbered by memes with misleading text, screenshots of fake posts from other platforms or posts that took unaltered images and misrepresented them,” Texas A&M said in the study.
Instagram accounts such as @NYTimes and @Impact provide posts to their followers that fact-check information from presidential debates and other sources circulating the internet that could be false or exaggerated.
After the vice presidential debate on Oct. 1, @NYTimes made a post regarding claims from both JD Vance and Tim Walz, verifying false or exaggerated claims each candidate made and providing necessary context and clarity to their followers.
Measures to reduce the misinformation that runs rampant on social platforms are increasing, and tips on how to combat the misinformation are available online through sources such as the News Literacy Project, including being skeptical, not cynical and not resharing articles you haven’t read.
