Small Audiences, Big Impact: Micro-Influencers in the US 2024 Elections
In the months leading up to the November 2024 US elections, warnings in the media sounded against the role of foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI): meddling conducted by other nation states to influence the outcome of electoral and political moments within a country. Largely, the concerns were founded on the rising use of AI technologies in influence campaigns, in particular to develop deep-fakes and amplify other false information that would confuse voters. However, a new threat, involving otherwise largely under the radar actors, was also in the national – and international – spotlight: sponsored political influencers.
In early September 2024, the US Justice Department charged two employees of RT, the Russian state media network, with “conspiracy to commit money laundering and to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act”. RT had allegedly paid an influencer marketing firm, listed in the indictment as an unnamed Tennessee company and its parent company, nearly $10 million to “produce and distribute videos supporting Russian aims”. The firm was later uncovered, through examining matching details in the indictment to identifying features of the company (such as matching language on their website) as Tenet Media.
According to the case against them, Tenet Media founders worked with the two RT employees to recruit influencers to create over 2,000 YouTube videos, which gathered more than 16 million views. In a WIRED analysis, the videos were largely focused on “highly divisive culture war topics” such as the rights of transgender people. These narratives were seemingly in line with the alleged Russian government linked propaganda campaign “The Good Old USA Project”, which, in an unsealed affidavit, the Department of Justice, asserted sought to encourage online communities to elect Donald Trump president and promoted the idea that “Republicans are “victims of discrimination.”
In the days following the indictment, Reuters noted that many of the videos remained online. Even after the videos were taken down, there was still a lack of clarity about who was responsible for pulling the videos: the platforms or Tenet Media. Part of the difficulty in removing the videos, exists, in part, because there are limited ways to detect which videos, which opinions and which products were part of the paid campaigns and which were the voluntary, unpaid videos and original ideas of the influencers.
This sensational story captured media attention for several weeks. And though it is noteworthy and will be the foundation for numerous future understandings of how influencers work, this high-profile instance only scratches the surface of this industry.
Since 2016, the Influence Industry Project has conducted research into the use of private individuals and companies in the pursuit of political influence – firms that are often under-reported in media coverage. Following the massive media maelstrom surrounding the Cambridge Analytica scandal, our work documented more than 500 companies engaging in similar activities. Once again, we find ourselves asking what is beyond the story of Tenet Media and what we find is a vast and growing network of micro- and macro-influencers being engaged for political influence. This type of micro-targeting has been growing over the last election cycle with predictions, which are now confirmed, that 2024 would be the “first serious influencer election” in the US by both the Republican and Democratic parties. This article seeks to set out an understanding of the role of influencers leading up to November 2024.
Influencers in the US 2024 Elections
Two months ahead of election day, it was already clear that there was a rise in influencers promoting political content as signaled by their presence at both the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. The RNC invited more than 70 influencers and the DNC invited over 200 influencers with a “cumulative reach of 169 million people”. In both conventions influencers were offered full convention credentials. Among the creators at the DNC were account holders with millions of followers, as well as smaller, more niche account owners such as @abbiesmcadams a recent college graduate and nonprofit leader with, at the time, around 200 followers on TikTok and a little over 6,000 on Instagram.
See www.nytimes.com/2024/08/23/us/politics/dnc-social-media-influencers.html
Micro-influencer is a term for an internet personality with a moderate online following: some define this as 2,000 – 20,000 followers though other sources specify between 1,000 – 10,000 followers which can also be differentiated as a nano-influencer. As opposed to a celebrity or an account with millions of followers, the micro-influencer’s main value with their audience is the perceived authenticity gained by their lack of platform. Curtis Hougland, chief executive of People First (formerly Main Street One), a firm that connects influencers to clients, told Financial Times that “the person delivering your message should look like you and talk like you.” While a small number of followers might suggest authenticity, it can also produce a larger number of quality engagements: (for example clicks on links in the post or the use of special discount codes to purchase products) which are close to 5% for users with under 5,000 followers compared to 1.5% for users with more than 1 million followers.
The Creator Economy
The use of influencers, in particular micro-influencers, who are touted for their authenticity and connection, represents a growing stream for businesses, politicians and private groups to reach new, targeted audiences. The tactic of engaging with micro-influencers responds to three issues created by the current developments within digital influence technologies. Firstly, amid rising campaign costs and an increasingly crowded online media space, marketers are looking for new ways to cut through the noise and connect with consumers and voters. As audiences are starting to turn away from traditional print or television ad campaigns, the micro-influencer stands out as a perceived “real” connection to their followers. Secondly, amid scandals and people on the lookout for nefarious tactics, there is an interest in using smaller scale channels that are harder to trace.
And finally, the trust in traditional media and media consumption is diminishing and consequently the habits of people across age ranges are changing, in particular for young people. PEW Research Center showed in 2022, that US.adults under 30 trusted social media news almost as much as national media outlets. This demographic of Gen Z voters, which is estimated to be nearly 42 million 18-to-27 year olds, is potentially crucial in battleground states. Even if all American adults aren’t actively searching for news content, they are encountering it on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram with over 60% getting news from “Influencers or celebrities”. The role of influencers in American media – particularly during an election year – was solidified in 2024 when President Biden invited content creators to the White House, telling them, “The biggest thing you got going for you, and I hope you keep it, is you’re trusted...You’re trusted. And it makes the difference.”
The shift from traditional print media to digital platforms has led advertisers and marketers to divert parts of their spending towards generating income through paid advertisements placed on digital platforms. Money is now also being channeled towards online influencers. Using the influencer’s platform can be, from an advertiser’s, and political campaigner’s perspective, very effective for views compared to traditional media: The CEO of influencer network AtAdvocacy told the news agency Semafor that while the young people under 35 that watched the Republican debate were in the tens of thousands, that the influencer campaigns were capable of reaching millions of the same target group every day. One company marketing executive estimated that visitors to their website who had come from influencer content were “11 times more likely to take action than their typical traffic.”
While influencers are commonly associated with more commercial interests like fitness, travel or fashion, other sectors with political-motives are taking part: from Big Oil to election candidates. And it’s a large market for the campaigns to bet on, as influencers, and associated private firms who are organising and contracting them, are part of an industry growing from $1.7 billion in 2016 to $21.1 billion in 2024. And of that global $21.1 billion industry, an estimated 75 percent of the influencer marketing worldwide takes place in the United States.
Generalizing the standards of the creator economy and role of influencers in a campaign is difficult because of the number of variables involved, for example, the incentives and the conditions under which they work including how much they earn and the content they promote, differ depending on the company they’re engaged by. The payments that creators stand to gain varies with some being paid a singular lump sum – like influencers who worked with the Democratic Majority Action PAC) whereas other firms create monetization based on conversions (a measure of engagement in which the viewer then takes action such as through clicks, newsletter sign-ups or donations) and their earnings might not be very large sums. Speaking to Wired, an Instagram content creator (focused on geriatric care for older adults) with under 4,000 followers (at the time) reported making about $500 through working with the private platform of the influencer connector agency, Urban Legend. Another creator with fewer than 100,000 followers told Politico that they had made about $1,000 for several Instagram and TikTok posts. Payments involved in political messaging and influence can have consequences for democratic discourse: when the incentive which they get paid by is to get clicks or drive traffic, there could become an underlying shadow incentive to create content that gets attention – such as content with controversial messaging which creates more reactive actions from their audiences.
Identifying the micro-influencers across the country can be a difficult task. In the last years, private firms have begun running private platforms connecting influencers to political and non-political organisations. Influencer contracting firms have claimed to have networks ranging from the hundreds to millions of influencers at a time – though it is difficult to verify this marketing claim. The private firm, People First, reportedly worked with “about 10,000 influencers during the [2020] election cycle to cover seven congressional races and about a dozen other advocacy and state-level campaigns.”
Screenshot from Instagram
Even for the private companies, however, identifying the right influencers can be time-consuming. Some companies reported having dedicated staff to find, vet and contract individual influencers while others report using digital solutions such as AI and automated tools. Either way, the firms can find specific content creators they want to work with such as by geography, gender, or age, which correlate with the voter profiles they are targeting. In the words of an industry professional “the benefit is you can geotarget – getting local community leaders.”
Similar to other elements of the influence industry, in which firms pop up around an election campaign only to disappear or evolve afterwards, sponsored political posts don’t necessarily represent a permanent shift in the content of these influencers’ profiles. Creators reported to news outlets deleting the posts after a stipulated period of time to return to their usual post topics with one saying they removed the posts after the election because “politics can be quite polarising, unlike beauty and fashion”. The process of creating the content also varies depending on the firm. While some influencers report having the ability to craft their own message – firms also report not wanting to have the post be a breakaway from the influencer’s typical style – other’s are required to run the posts past the sponsor first. One influencer marketing firm reported not giving scripts or direct talking points, but instead offering briefs on internal polling and best messaging practices.
To disclose or not to disclose
As the profile of content creators in politics grows, the lack of mandated disclosures either by the firms or the influencers becomes an increasingly difficult hurdle to tracing and monitoring paid influence by a political campaign. Monitoring the digital sphere is proving to be an evolving and challenging task for the US government’s dedicated agency, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC’s role is to protect consumers from unfair business practices and competition. As brand partnerships become more commonplace there have been attempts by governmental agencies to formalise and to regulate how an influencer should approach for-profit commercial sponsored posts. These protections also include social media platforms, requiring influencers who share commercial products to clearly demonstrate that they are part of a paid campaign or any “financial, employment, personal, or family relationship with a brand.” Not only must it be stated, but the connection cannot be “hard to miss”, such as buried in at the bottom of a caption or in the hashtags. While it’s impossible for the FTC to monitor every sponsored post across the country and large gaps in prosecuting exist, there have been notable, high-profile cases that have demonstrated that the rules are enforced and to incentivize companies and influencers to follow the rules laid out by the government.
However, there are less clear and rigorous regulations for disclosure of political affiliations. In part, the rules for disclosure in the commercial sector have been more easily set as the relationship between entities is clear and follow the same principles as marketing. A company pays the influencer to market a good, product or service to a specialised demographic of potential buyers. While this dynamic is relatively straight-forward, it become murkier when attempting to apply the same rules to political speech. When the marketing campaign is not linked to a product but instead to a stance on a political issue or support for a campaign, it can be more difficult – though not impossible – to tell what is a protected personal point of view or merely another political marketing strategy.
This new type of political marketing has led to an interesting interplay between the FTC and another government agency, the Federal Elections Commission (FEC). Historically, it was the FEC charged with ensuring fair and transparent election marketing, but this monitoring has not shifted to the realities of new campaign techniques. At the end of 2023, the FEC unanimously approved the “Technological Modernization” regulation, which attempted to update a “host of existing regulations” to extend the agency’s rules around technologies (the last round of updates were in 2006). Through the update, digital ads, on websites as well as across social media, streaming sites, mobile apps and wearable devices are required by federal law to clearly indicated who paid for the ad, which brings these ads in line with traditional media ads.
However, notably in this ruling was the exemption of paid influencers. Though the original draft rule included the distinction that influencers who were paid to promote a political message would have to disclose their affiliation; after a year of debate, the FEC Commissioners ultimately decided to remove the phrasing and to allow the political messages to have disclaimers based on creator discretion, what could be also be referred to as, an honor system. The removal of the requirement to disclose was supported on the grounds that it could create a chilling effect, a term commonly used in conjunction with surveillance of journalists. Tech Freedom, a libertarian leaning Think Tank, filed comments to the FEC in 2023 urging them that, “over-regulating online political speech by everyday citizens risks undoing the democratizing role that the Internet has played in political expression and harms our national interests.” In an official statement to Axios after the ruling, Trump-appointed Commissioner Vice Chair Sean Cooksey said, “This rulemaking is a win for free speech on the internet. By limiting its disclaimer regulations only to traditional paid ads, the FEC is reaffirming its longstanding exemption for political activity online.”
Shortly after the ruling, in December 2023, two of the FEC Commissioners Ellen Weintraub and Shana Broussard issued a joint statement noting that the “Commission missed a golden opportunity to address the ever-increasing phenomenon of social media influencers who are paid to create or share political content.” Organisations and groups who were – and still are – pushing for federal disclosure requirements continue to argue that these are important to transparency and are a useful indicator for users to navigate the digital world. As researchers have noted these posts blur the line between “grassroots organising or the kind of coordinated tactics that could be seen as manipulative or deceptive if not disclosed properly.”
Though disclosure is not required by law, the influencer contractor firms may require it. However, this is up to their discretion. A Democratic PAC with an in-house creator program, called Priorities, told Politico reporters that they do require the hashtag #PrioritiesPartner for all paid video content. And in some instances disclosing might not be popular with influencers themselves, as speaking with researchers, numerous influencers noted that they preferred not to add the disclosure, if not absolutely required by the contractor firm, because it seems inauthentic - and similarly in some instances the company – or political group - itself may even not want the creators to disclose because it’s important that the videos seem authentic. At seemingly every level of the supply chain, each actor is seeking to foster a sense of grassroots authenticity, despite the exchange of money. In another example, founder of Urban Legend, the “partner organization” of online advertising firm Legendary Campaigns LLC, told Wired that disclosures, while in the terms and conditions of the firm, are not enforced by the firm because “that’s the FTC’s job”. This stance succinctly demonstrates how influencer marketing campaigns can evade responsible campaign accreditation: the FTC doesn’t specifically pertain to political speech and the FEC refuses to wade into influencer campaigns. The lack of clear policies leave actors available to shift the burden of responsibility.
Without disclosures, tracking influencer or paid campaigns often falls to the responsibility of investigators and journalists. While investigators may be able to track and try to piece together networks, such as an investigation by the HuffPost reporter Jesselyn Cook in September 2021, which seemed to show a link between a sizable number of Instagram posts and a payment from the National Republican Senatorial Committee, this work is time intensive and there are too many influence campaigns for reporters to track alone. This investigation was picked up again by the digital media outlet Wired in July 2022 who were able, using third-party search tools to find a unique URL construction, to identify over 700 connected posts across Facebook and Twitter. The role and extent of influencer campaigns are revealed only due to investigators and journalists undertaking time and resource intensive reportage.
Though we can’t track influencer disclosures, existing financial rules do ensure that the amount paid to the influencer management firms is tracked. However, it’s very difficult to then see where that money goes – to what influencers and to pay for what tactics. There remains a lack of transparency of the actions taken by the firms that connect influencers to political campaigns. Allowing sponsored political posts legally and on platforms to exist in a gray zone undermines the work of the same platforms and governmental agencies to track and ensure fair play in political campaigning. Influencers make campaigns, and their spending, much harder to track.
What does this mean for voters?
For monitoring and transparency initiatives, like the Influence Industry Project, the lack of formal disclosure policies leaves a large gap in the ability to map the influence industry and consequently to support the ability of voters and regulators to recognise paid political influence. The problem in question is not restricted to the United States either. After several elections across the globe in 2024, including India, Indonesia, and the European Parliament reports of influencers and online personalities playing a role were in the media headlines. For example, in April, the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA) identified third-party spending to digital campaigns as a method for engaging influencers and other guerilla marketing tactics like troll farms in Indian elections, despite the Election Commission of India (ECI) issuing guidelines to help counter the impact of such informal campaigns.
Voters and digital users need accessible and up-to-date training on how political groups use online tools to create political influence. This type of digital media literacy can help voters to be more vocal to their government representatives about wanting disclosure policies and also make them aware that they may encounter a political post online that might well be part of a sponsored network. Yet the burden cannot remain with journalists, researchers and voters, a multi-stakeholder approach is needed to address the growing influence of paid political micro-influencers online. Amidst increasing political polarisation, decreasing trust in formal media and increasing trust in social media platforms and personalities, the need for paid influence networks to be transparent is imperative.
Author: Cassiane Cladis
Editor: Amber Macintyre