In an effort to bolster Joe Biden’s popularity among young voters, the White House may soon create an “army” of social media influencers. According to Axios, the Biden administration will have four digital staffers who would focus on influencers and content creators. This is part of an ongoing strategy by democrats to target voters between the age of 18-29 and White House deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon said, “We’re trying to reach young people, but also moms who use different platforms to get information and climate activists and people whose main way of getting information is digital.”
The White House has already engaged hundreds of influencers
According to the source, the White House has already engaged hundreds of influencers, and the administration regards young voters as critical to Democrats’ electoral success. Democrats outperformed Republicans among young voters by 28 points in the 2022 midterm elections. The White House hosted over a dozen influencers for a State of Union watches party in February. One of the attendees of the event said several influencers asked, “When are we going to get press briefing passes?” And that the administration was “actually very responsive to it.”
This is not the first time the administration has considered abandoning traditional media. In March 2021, they received a group of approximately 30 TikTok stars and briefed them on Ukraine. At the time, Rob Flaherty, the White House director of digital strategy, stated that they wanted to ensure that the influencers had information from “an authoritative source.” In that meeting, one of the attendees asked, “What efforts or strategies are currently in place to either reduce or prevent the misinformation that we receive in the United States by outside sources, essentially, regarding the conflict between Ukraine and Russia?”
This will provide the creators with more continuous access to the president
Then-press secretary Jen Psaki responded, “We’re talking to all of you, and I think that this, part of that as we started off this conversation conveying is we recognize how important your platforms are and how important it is to provide as much accurate information as possible to people who are using their voices and their platforms to project accurate information. Because the best antidote to disinformation is the truth”
During the midterm elections, the administration resorted to additional TikTok stars, such as Dylan Mulveny, who was requested to sit down with the President and ask him questions about trans issues. “The President has watched Days of Girlhood – it’s kind of epic,” Mulveny said. According to Axios, the White House stated that this will provide the creators with more continuous access to the president, resulting in the administration leaning more towards alternative media as he prepares to officially declare his re-election run.
