Political Relational Influencers: The Mobilization of Social Media Influencers in the Political Arena

Authors

  • Anastasia Goodwin Center for Media Engagement, The University of Texas at Austin, USA
  • Katie Joseff Center for Media Engagement, The University of Texas at Austin, USA
  • Martin J. Riedl Center for Media Engagement, The University of Texas at Austin, USA
  • Josephine Lukito Center for Media Engagement, The University of Texas at Austin, USA
  • Samuel Woolley Center for Media Engagement, The University of Texas at Austin, USA

Keywords:

social media, influencer, politics, Instagram, TikTok, grassroots, astroturfing

Abstract

Social media platforms are a powerful tool to exert influence and impress opinions—for commercial operators, brands, and political campaigns. Influencers can help campaigns reach specific audiences and convey support for issues and candidates. In this study, we focus on political relational influencers who operate to legitimize and amplify political messages, specifically in the context of Instagram and TikTok. We define this group of influencers as content creators who promote political and social causes, for payments or without payments, to their audiences. Through in-depth interviews with 18 influence campaign stakeholders—a term under which we congregate influencer marketing executives, political organizers, strategists, influencers, journalists, academics, and regulators—we shed light on the complex and sophisticated ways influencers coordinate among each other and with political campaigns, the motivations of influencers to get involved in political campaigns, and the question of where to draw the line between genuine grassroots coordination and disingenuous (astroturfing) organizing.

Author Biographies

Anastasia Goodwin, Center for Media Engagement, The University of Texas at Austin, USA

Anastasia Goodwin* is the undergraduate research lead for the propaganda research lab at the Center for Media Engagement (CME), and a senior pursuing her bachelor’s degree in journalism at the School of Journalism and Media, all at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include online extremism, computational propaganda, and the politicization of social media influencers. Her work has been published in outlets such as Teen Vogue and Wired.(*indicates equal contributions and shared first-authorship)

Katie Joseff, Center for Media Engagement, The University of Texas at Austin, USA

Katie Joseff* (MA, Stanford University) is a research affiliate at the Center for Media Engagement (CME) at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests include political disinformation and election manipulation, the psychological biases underlying propaganda, harassment and hate speech, and the ethics of emerging technologies. Her work has been published through organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the Anti-Defamation League, and The Institute for the Future.(*indicates equal contributions and shared first-authorship)

Martin J. Riedl, Center for Media Engagement, The University of Texas at Austin, USA

Martin J. Riedl (PhD, University of Texas at Austin) is a postdoctoral fellow for the propaganda research lab at the Center for Media Engagement, and research associate with the Technology and Information Policy Institute, both at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include platform governance, digital journalism, and disinformation. His work has been published in Computers in Human Behavior, Digital Journalism, and Social Media + Society, among other journals.

Josephine Lukito, Center for Media Engagement, The University of Texas at Austin, USA

Josephine (“Jo”) Lukito (PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison) is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Media and a senior faculty research associate at the Center for Media Engagement (CME), both at the University of Texas at Austin. She studies cross-platform media language in the global political communication context, focusing especially on interactions between news and social media platforms. Her work has been published in journals such as The International Journal of Press/Politics, Political Communication, and Information, Communication & Society.

Samuel Woolley, Center for Media Engagement, The University of Texas at Austin, USA

Samuel Woolley (PhD, University of Washington) is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Media and a project director for propaganda research at the Center for Media Engagement (CME), both at the University of Texas at Austin. His research is focused on how emergent technologies are used in and around global political communication, particularly in the context of computational propaganda and how social media are used to manipulate public opinion. He is the author of The Reality Game: How the Next Wave of Technology Will Break the Truth. His research has been published in the International Journal of Communication, New Media & Society, and First Monday, among other journals.

Downloads

Published

2023-02-13

Issue

Vol. 17 (2023)

Section

Articles

License

The International Journal of Communication is an academic journal. As such, it is dedicated to the open exchange of information. For this reason, IJoC is freely available to individuals and institutions. Copies of this journal or articles in this journal may be distributed for research or educational purposes free of charge and without permission. However, commercial use of the IJoC website or the articles contained herein is expressly prohibited without the written consent of the editor. Authors who publish in The International Journal of Communication will release their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd) license. This license allows anyone to copy and distribute the article for non-commercial purposes provided that appropriate attribution is given. For details of the rights authors grants users of their work, see the "human-readable summary" of the license, with a link to the full license. (Note that "you" refers to a user, not an author, in the summary.) This journal utilizes the LOCKSSsystem to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. The publisher perpetually authorizes participants in the LOCKSS system to archive and restore our publication through the LOCKSS System for the benefit of all LOCKSS System participants. Specifically participating libraries may:
  • Collect and preserve currently accessible materials;
  • Use material consistent with original license terms;
  • Provide copies to other LOCKSS appliances for purposes of audit and repair.
 

Fair Use

The U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 specifies, in Section 107, the terms of the Fair Use exception: Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include:
  1. the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
  2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
  3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; &
  4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.

The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors. In accord with these provisions, the International Journal of Communication believes in the vigorous assertion and defense of Fair Use by scholars engaged in academic research, teaching and non-commercial publishing. Thus, we view the inclusion of “quotations” from existing print, visual, audio and audio-visual texts to be appropriate examples of Fair Use, as are reproductions of visual images for the purpose of scholarly analysis. We encourage authors to obtain appropriate permissions to use materials originally produced by others, but do not require such permissions as long as the usage of such materials falls within the boundaries of Fair Use.

The International Journal of Communication encourages authors to employ fair use in their scholarly publishing wherever appropriate. Fair use is the right to use unlicensed copyrighted material (whether it is text, images, audio-visual, or other) in your own work, in some circumstances. We consult the Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Scholarly Research in Communication, created by the International Communication Association and endorsed by the National Communication Association, and you should too. If you have any questions about whether fair use applies to your uses of copyrighted material (whether it is text, images, audio-visual, or other) in your scholarship, simply include your rationale, grounded in the Best Practices, as a supplementary document with your submission.