In the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump’s win in the 2024 US presidential election, there’s been a bull rush of public soul-searching and recriminations to explain how it happened.
A major theme that has emerged is about how 2024’s information environment had shifted the battleground underneath the campaigns’ feet. In particular, there has been a general consensus that an ascendant class of independent influencers and creators on social media asserted itself as, well, influential, while the already limping mainstream media looked increasingly small and ineffectual.
One meme that has emerged in this discussion has been the search for a “leftist Joe Rogan” among Democrat supporters. Both Trump and JD Vance had appeared on the the world’s most popular podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, while Kamala Harris had reportedly declined after her camp refused to fly to Austin for a three-hour interview.
The idea of a leftist Rogan, understood less literally, reflects the desire for an alternative online media ecosystem that reaches the enormous audience of people who aren’t political diehards but also aren’t reflexively conservative or right-wing. (Among the many flaws of a wanting to artificially create a mirrored Rogan is that the man himself was, until recently, supportive of Democratic candidates including Bernie Sanders and Barack Obama, but I digress.)
This theme is often paired with an argument that voters’ evaluation of the economy as doing poorly under Biden was at odds with strong economic indicators, a belief that may have been nurtured through a hypercritical right-wing media apparatus and online creators. The implicit argument is that Americans were convinced that the economy is worse that it really is — an argument that is speculative, at best.
It’s difficult to know exactly just how much of a role influencers played in the election. The ~vibes~ certainly felt that way, but it’s hard to say exactly what their influence was and whether it is being overstated because we take for granted all the ways that mainstream media’s output influences discourse and culture.
Without adjudicating on that, it’s clear, at least, that both campaigns considered the influencer economy as more important than ever. Trump largely eschewed traditional mainstream media interviews barring friendly outlet Fox News, and the Harris’ campaign nurtured relationships with online creators and (to a lesser extent than its opponent) also set up interviews on popular podcasts like Call Her Daddy.
One important part of this social media influencer versus mainstream media dynamic that has gone largely undiscussed in the context of the election is how it came about.
Obviously there’s been a growing distrust in the mainstream media. At the same time, the invention and popularisation of social media has made it possible for anyone to broadcast their views in a way never previously possible. One interpretation is that this is just the natural result of giving everyone a megaphone that used to be reserved for those in the media, and was essentially inevitable. This is definitely true to some extent, but it ignores the cause of these structural changes.
People aren’t just “turning” away from mainstream media, they’re being routed there by a Silicon Valley that’s becoming increasingly hostile to journalism.
Here are some of the changes since the last US election:
- Meta has reduced the amount of political content that you will be exposed to on platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Threads. It’s also removed specific news features like the News Tab on Facebook.
- Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover included removing the verification check marks for news organisations in favour of a pay-for-play service which also boosts the visibility of a user’s posts. There’s also been a material impact from Musk using the platform as a personal pulpit, blasting out anti-media screeds to his 200 million followers (and likely boosted by changes to the platform’s algorithms).
- Google has introduced AI summaries as part of its features — like the electoral vote counter — that increasingly keep users on the platform rather than going to other websites. (It’s worth noting that Google worked with Associated Press for the election counter, but nevertheless serves to weaken the relationship between its audience and the publication by putting itself in the middle).
The cumulative effect is that tech companies are actively choosing to reduce the amount of journalism that’s being seen by their users.
That’s not to say whether this is a good or bad trend; it’s not just Trump supporters who are happy about this shift away from mainstream media. Nor does the mainstream media have an entitlement to preferential treatment by big tech.
But in an election where billionaires and business shifted towards Trump — in some cases tacitly by choosing to remain silent, in other cases with full-throated endorsement — it is worth acknowledging that the ways an increasing number of us find out about the world are controlled by a handful of tech companies, their shareholders and their largely unaccountable CEOs.
And, over the past four years, they put their fingers on the scale. Less news, more content. Fewer outlets, more creators. These were the conditions that helped pave the way for Trump to make the most unlikely political comeback that any of us have ever seen.
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