Political content on social media apps like TikTok, X and Instagram has become an enhanced form of communication for politicians to reach a younger audience and encourage young people to vote. There has been an extreme increase in political social media use, like President Donald Trump heavily using X and former Vice President Kamala Harris' use of TikTok in both of their 2024 presidential campaigns.
Now, social media has become a polarizing atmosphere for political opinion, and the algorithm is overrun with worst-case-scenario hypotheticals and conspiracy theories. It's hard to gather a coherent thought of your own.
With the surplus of political content, specific creators have been given the title of “political influencer.” Influencers like Dean Withers, Harry Sisson, Candace Owens and Isabel Brown have become a political influence for young voters on social media. They often make commentary videos based on recent headlines or public debates with people who oppose their own views.
However, polarizing the political climate on social media makes the viewer feel their vote or perspectives don't hold power.
Political discourse is healthy in a democracy that relies on its citizens to educate themselves and create opinions. Democracy relies on political debate, and influencers are promoting that on a large scale, but the influence social media analytics have on these creators can often go unnoticed.
However, these influencers are often subject to extreme opinions. Often, the videos that gain the most attention from these creators are the ones that contain extremely polarizing and shocking takes, whether that take comes from them or the person they are speaking with. Extreme opinions in videos give political opponents the ability to clip them and paint the entire party as a whole. This strategy can also be used on both sides.
Social media has become a competition for each political party to see who can gather enough video evidence that paints the opposing party in a negative light.
Some can express extreme opinions, but the majority lie in the middle, with 21% of U.S adult citizens classifying themselves as “center” according to a survey from YouGov. Both parties can likely find common ground on certain issues, but it’s hard to find and navigate on social media when the extreme opinions are the ones being pushed.
Baiting people in TikTok videos who claim extreme opinions only exhausts and shocks your audience. It gets them to comment and engage, successfully gaining many views, but it doesn’t produce a productive political conversation.
It's hard to imagine that analytics don't have any influence on their commentary and what they decide to post, making political influencer posts unreliable and not based on any attempt to educate people, but to simply garner a reaction. Withers has made up to approximately 40 million views on some of his videos, and Owens has garnered up to 50 million.
The TikTok creator fund is notorious for paying as little as $0.02 per thousand views, and for each creator on the app, that pay is different. Even though a video like Withers would earn him approximately $1,000 from the creator fund, that engagement reaches him to further platforms like YouTube that pay $1 to $10 per thousand views. Creators like Withers also use TikTok’s “Live” feature, where viewers can send him “gifts” in real time. Those gifts range from $0.01 to approximately $600.
With these high-value money-making opportunities, it's hard to imagine these influencers aren't thinking about the number of views when they are deciding what to post, and posts that gain the most amount of views are likely videos that gain a shocking reaction from the audience.
Political dialogue on social media can be heavily impactful when it comes to voter turnout, but if the algorithms of these platforms are flooded with exaggerated views, then it’s not encouraging or challenging ideas but exhausting the viewer of any political content.
To encourage young voters to stay engaged with politics, social media needs to become a space for productive political dialogue that educates people on all sides of the debate, not just the extreme.
Grace Schmidt is a sophomore studying journalism and fashion merchandising at Ohio University. Please note the opinions expressed in this column do not represent those of The Post. Want to talk to Grace about her column? Email her at gs326823@ohio.edu
