While Democrats have long commanded legacy media attention, Republicans have made up ground with content creation to broadcast their own messages to growing online audiences.
President Donald Trump has always had a love-hate relationship with legacy news outlets, but his 2024 presidential campaign saw him embracing social media to boost his message and reach new audiences.
Trump recorded several lengthy interviews with male influencers, including podcaster Joe Rogan, comedian Theo Von, and wrestler Logan Paul, as he sought to win a second term in the White House. The strategy helped Trump appeal to young men ahead of the November election, where he ultimately defeated former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Both Democrats and Republicans have experimented with utilizing social media platforms in their campaigning, but even Democrats acknowledge that Republicans are ‘dominating’ online spaces.
“I think TV is now going to the wayside in the new frontier of politics and social media and Trump dominates on social media, and so now he’s dominating the political space,” Gen Z Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL) told the Washington Examiner. “I think we’ve got to do the same thing.”
Furthermore, young Democratic members recognize the massive influence social media has on politics and campaigns.
“It’s clear that if we want to get our message out there, we’ve got to engage with the new media and the new attention economy,” Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE) told the Washington Examiner. “So I think, frankly, both parties are just engaging in the reality of today now.”
According to a Pew research survey, about one in five Americans say they regularly get news from influencers, with two-thirds saying it helps them understand current events better. The survey noted that right-leaning news influencers tend to post more than left-leaning influencers.
Another study by Pew Research, published in November, found that more news influencers lean right than left, 27% to 21%. To counter Republicans’ grip on online spaces, influencer and CEO of Girl and the Gov, Sammy Kanter, told the Washington Examiner that Democrats need to invest in influencers directly.
“Democrats need to invest in those people, you know, pundits or pundits to be, whether it’s talking about pop culture or politics directly, to be able to actually get somewhere with people. People aren’t gonna necessarily just trust any, you know, Joe Schmo off the street. They actually have to spend time and money investing in the long game,” Kanter said.
“They need to invest in podcasters and influencers that can create long-term trust with their audiences. That’s something that Joe Rogan, whether you like him or not, can be complimented for,” she continued.
House Democrats appear to already be trying to adapt their presence online. Multiple members, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), and Susie Lee (D-NV), appear in a TikTok video that plays off a viral video game-inspired “choose your character” trend.
However, the video was quickly mocked online and by the White House, with the Trump administration’s rapid response account writing, “Democrats not be cringe challenge. Level: impossible,” in a post to X.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) demonstrated Republicans’ use of these deeply rooted media phenomena by inviting conservative podcasters Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh to Trump’s joint address this week. Late last month, Attorney General Pam Bondi gave some of the long-awaited sex offender Jeffery Epstein files to a group of influencers instead of traditional media.
Influencers are a whole different ballgame than traditional media sources, as they are not subjected to the same journalistic ethics and standards the mainstream media follows. One large fact separates the two: relationships drastically influence content.
Both Democrats and Republicans can agree on the importance of investing in these relationships with content creators.
“I don’t think that Republicans need to pay content creators,” Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) told the Washington Examiner. “I think that we’ve got a pretty organic network of people who are already bought into the cause, just ideologically.”
Politicians throughout generations have recognized the power of relationships and how they drive productivity. Social media is no different.
“I think it’s really also about forging genuine relationships with them, and bringing them into the way you’re thinking, the work we’re doing,” Frost said.
“You could be friendly with someone, and it’s not really supposed to change your coverage of them, but if you’re a social media influencer, podcaster, or someone, they don’t have to go by those ethics,” Frost continued.
Olivia Julianna, a 22-year-old Democratic influencer, told the Washington Examiner that messaging from Democrats often falls short on social media because it is too “intellectualized,” leading it to “not be digestible to the average person who isn’t super plugged into politics.”
As a result, Julianna asserted, the Democrats’ forays into social media play “a lot of insider baseball instead of reaching out to people on the periphery.”
“Republicans have done a fantastic job, the fact that how they’ve done that is through disinformation, misinformation and hate campaigns, either way, they have cracked code on how to break through that periphery and reach people on the outside who may otherwise be unengaged in politics,” Julianna said.
Julianna pointed out that Democrats often gatekeep their spaces to only allow people who fit the narrative they want to portray, which limits their reach when trying to reach those audiences out of a fear of saying the wrong thing.
“What Republicans do is they will put out a piece of content with the specific intention of getting Democrats to freak out about it … They’ve now used our audience and our outrage to springboard to people on the periphery who may otherwise not have seen this. Democrats do not do that,” she said.
RICH MCCORMICK WON’T ABANDON TOWN HALLS AFTER DOGE HOME DISTRICT UPROAR
As talk of the 2026 midterms amps up, it is clear social media and content creators will play a large role and whether either party will fully use the new medium to their advantage is yet to be determined.
“This is the new TV,” Frost said.
