More than 200 content creators hit Chicago this week, bringing their ring lights and attempts at business casual as part of a historic push by the Democratic national convention to credential non-traditional media.
Memes had fueled the initial excitement surrounding Kamala Harris’s 11th-hour presidential bid, and the campaign aimed to churn out more viral moments by granting the creators access during this crucial week. Many, if not most, of the creators paid their own way to Chicago. Some were sent courtesy of political action committees. On the convention floor, they have danced to Chappell Roan, landed interviews with lawmakers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Raphael Warnock, and filmed get-ready-with-me videos of their convention outfits. Is their content breaking through?
Some of the better-known creators at the convention include Deja Foxx, who worked with the Harris campaign in 2019 as a surrogate strategist and spoke on the convention floor this week; Hasan Piker, a Twitch streamer who used TikTok to spotlight pro-Palestinian protesters; the menstrual equity activist Nadya Okamoto, who interviewed Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, about her first period; and the fashion influencer Vidya Gopalan, who spoke to Harris about sharing a last name with the vice-president’s late mother.
A Wired dispatch from one influencer after-party described a scene that included a special couch for JD Vance, a “wall of weirdos” with photos of Republican leaders, a wall of Democratic “hotties” like Travis Kelce, and an arcade room with “abortion access Skee-Ball”. Liz Plank, a journalist and creator with over 589,000 followers, posted a video from the party in which she asked men who tried to buy her a drink to donate to an abortion fund instead.
Not all of the content coming out of the event is pro-Harris. Charlie Kirk, founder of the rightwing organization Turning Point USA, posted videos from the convention floor, including one in which he goaded the president of the Young Democrats of Georgia with the question “What is a woman?” Bari Weiss’s the Free Press put together a mash-up of interviews with Harris voters struggling to name one of her policies.
But the majority of creators present support Harris and want their viewers to as well. This year, Democrats expect millions of gen Z voters to hit the polls for the first time, and TikTok is gen Z’s main news source, with a third of US adults under 30 telling Pew Research Center they regularly get their news from the app. “Everyone is really excited that we’re here, because we have such a direct line to the youth vote, and everyone wants to do content with us,” said Alexis Williams, a TikToker who posts about fashion, Stem, and social justice.
Still, she said bridging the gap between the under-30s and older politicians at the convention can be a challenge. “It’s difficult to stand next to a more senior person and say, ‘OK, so we’re going to make this joke about Republicans, or play this Chappell Roan song, I swear it’s going to make sense. They’re like, ‘What does this mean?’”
Williams’s videos reveal what it’s like behind the scenes at the convention. She’s posted a tour of the “creator penthouse” overlooking the convention stage, filmed herself hauling free Plan B and UTI tests out of an after-party that handed out reproductive care products, and hammed it up on the convention floor in a pink tweed dress.
Videos that feel intimate do well on TikTok. Kory Aversa, a 51-year-old publicist and content creator from Philadelphia, treats the event like a red carpet, filming VIPs like Ocasio-Cortez, Tim and Gwen Walz and Jesse Jackson from just a few feet away.
“My content style is making you think like you’re in the seat next to me,” Aversa said. “It’s one thing to see a pretty picture in the newspaper, but it’s another to walk into the convention with me and be like, ‘holy crap, this is epic, Stephen Colbert is here.’ I want people to feel that with me.”
The official Harris campaign TikTok, @KamalaHQ, follows this ethos too, posting videos of staffers wearing Harris-Walz camo hats and cheering during speeches.
“When you turn on CNN or Fox News, you know exactly what you’re going to get,” said Heather Gardner, a 36-year-old TikToker covering the convention. “You’re going to hear the speeches and the talking heads. But the beauty of what we’re doing here is that everyone’s unique and different.” For Gardner, that means posting videos of the impressionist Matt Friend doing his best Walz, or of herself walking the convention floor in a brat green suit and coconut tree T-shirt.
(Some antics have crossed over to mainstream news: two young people wearing “Twinks for Kamala” shirts ended up on CNN, much to the delight of the terminally online.)
RaeShanda Lias, a 43-year-old content creator from Louisville, Kentucky, secured invitations to the convention from the Congressional Black caucus, Human Rights Campaign and Emerge America, a non-profit that supports Democratic women running for office. (Lias is an alum of the program, having run for Louisville city council in 2018.) She says influencers were given free rein to post what they want, so not all of their videos end up centering politics.
“My content deals with facts, fashion, and fun,” Lias said. In one video liked more than 58,000 times, Lias shows off a baby blue suit she wore to the Congressional Black caucus brunch, while riffing on how “demure” the outfit is. “But we’re all coming together to help elect the first Black and Asian woman to the highest point in this country,” she said.
For all the buzz surrounding this convention influencer class, there is still a clear line between journalists and content creators. Creators don’t break news. Most don’t factcheck, and many are fawning in their coverage. With this tension as a backdrop, Reuters reported that journalists from traditional media outlets were having to “battle for space” against creators, with journalists receiving less access.
“I had this major wake-up call yesterday where I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, we have so much more access than people who have been doing this for decades,’” Williams said.
It can feel tense at times. “The creators are learning how to be around reporters and the reporters are learning how to be around creators,” Aversa said. “I was at one event where a journalist came along and asked some of the creators to be mindful of holding up their phones and blocking cameras. We all have to coordinate with each other.”
It’s clear that most of the creators are using their access to contribute to Harris’s vibes-only brand of hopecore campaigning. But, despite being openly pro-Harris on social media, Williams says she doesn’t want her content to feel like a Harris ad. “A lot of us approach our content as, ‘These are the reasons we support her, and you should go out and do that, but be insightful and educated about the process,’” she said. “Giving people the knowledge of how the DNC works helps us create strategies that will get our administrations to listen to us, so we can get what we want out of politics.”
As Gardner put it in a TikTok: “Good vibes aren’t enough.”
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
