Important new report from CDT:
A social media creator gave gifts worth tens of thousands of dollars to Donald Trump during a livestream ahead of the 2024 presidential election. A progressive influencer ranted in a video that other creators were allegedly paid to attend the Democratic National Convention, while he was not. Half of TikTok users between ages 18-29 use the app to keep up with politics.
This report explores the growing role of political influencers in our democracy and how they fit — or fail to fit — within existing conceptual, legal, and policy models. Political influencers, like the billions of people worldwide for whom the internet is inextricable from political participation and civic engagement, rely on social media platforms that offer new ways to understand and engage with the political process, lower the barrier for political organizing, and give greater voice to private individuals.
At the same time, the evolving role of social media content creators in politics and media grafts greater complexity onto core components of American democracy, some of which are already under strain. Election integrity, free expression, and transparency converge with campaign spending and foreign influence, with little public understanding about how these influencers may be shaping their information environments.
The report proposes a working definition of political influencers and then explores relevant company policies and the U.S. legal framework. The company policy section covers political advertising, sponsored or branded content, and on-platform monetization. Regarding the US legal framework, the report examines political speech, commercial guidelines, election law and campaign finance, foreign influence, and state-level policy. It also explores constitutional considerations for future policymaking in these areas. The multidisciplinary nature of this report reflects the complexity of influencer-related issues and the need for social media platforms, government, political actors and the intermediaries they work with, and the content creators themselves to take action to protect American democracy and elections in the digital age.
Key findings from the report:
- Political influencers’ perceived authenticity and credibility with their followers make them particularly effective political messengers, as well as potential vectors for illicit foreign influence and dark money spending that can erode trust in democratic processes.
- In the same way that transparency can foster accountability in online governance, transparency regarding paid online political speech can empower voters to weigh the credibility and motivations of those seeking to sway their views.
- The transparency measures put in place by platforms, including paid partnership labels and branded content libraries, do not capture the full extent of compensated political influencer content and create incentives for circumvention.
- Influencer intermediaries, such as talent platforms and third-party marketing agencies, are important but sometimes hidden players in the political influencer economy, offering political and issue advocacy groups a convenient way to solicit and purchase political messaging content by online creators.
- Platform rules are not user friendly, leaving creators to navigate a web of policies related to branded content, disclosures, and political advertising, the complexity of which increases the chance of accidental or intentional violation of platform rules.
- Political influencers largely fall through the cracks of federal regulation, including oversight of political campaign activities.