Biden campaign struggles to keep young social media influencers in the fold

By Camila DeChalus, CNN

Washington (CNN) — Ashley Renne posted a more than minute-long video to her Instagram last September, enthusiastically telling her more than 100,000 followers about meeting President Joe Biden and emphasizing the importance of the Inflation Reduction Act.

But now, more than a year after that visit to the White House, her excitement about Biden’s agenda is waning – and she’s not alone among the influencers who were once key to the administration’s outreach to young voters.

Renne told CNN there is a big disconnect between what she sees “the government is doing and what the people want,” and her most recent post encourages others to research third-party candidates ahead of the primaries. On X, Renne recently wrote, “Rooting for you” to Marianne Williamson, who is running against Biden in the Democratic presidential primary.

Like other social media influencers, Renne has worked with the White House on their efforts to reach more voters and tout the administration’s policy accomplishments to help Biden better connect with voters on social media platforms that he may otherwise have been unable to reach. But now, with less than a year before voters head to the polls, some influencers who once helped amplify Biden’s achievements are torn about whether to keep working with him.

“Influencers played a huge role in getting him elected the first time because of our ability to reach younger audiences,” Renne, who is also a climate activist, said in an interview with CNN. “However, if the president is relying on influencers this time around, he’s going to have a tough time considering the state of the country right now and their disappointment in his administration at the moment.”

Biden’s ability to work with social media influencers could be a critical component to helping him galvanize more support among young voters after recent polls show that support for the president among those voters appears to be waning. In 2020, young voters played a big role in helping to elect him to office. Those voters are expected to still play an important role in the 2024 presidential election after studies indicate Gen Z and Millennials are expected to make up nearly half of the American electorate.

Since Biden was sworn into office, his administration has built a relationship with social media influencers that grants them access to the executive branch in a way that no other president has. White House officials have briefed social media influencers and content creators on issues involving the Ukraine-Russia conflict and had conversations with them about the importance of the Covid-19 vaccine at the height of the pandemic. Social media influencers have also been invited to attend White House events to see Biden making good on some of his campaign promises firsthand.

Not all of the influencers who work with the White House are frustrated. Harry Sisson, who has more than 746,200 followers on TikTok, called the hostage release agreement a “pretty big diplomatic breakthrough” and argued that it would work in Biden’s favor when courting young voters.

“I think that will kind of translate into young people saying, ‘Oh, you know, this is actually some good progress and the Biden administration was intimately involved in these negotiations,’” said Sisson, who has attended multiple events at the White House.

Kevin Munoz, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, said the president’s campaign will “work to meet voters where they are” in their campaign messaging.

“President Biden and Vice President Harris are proud to have received historically early and united support from across the diverse coalition that sent them to the White House in 2020,” Munoz said. “With the election a year away, our team – alongside groups and allies from across our 2020 coalition – are doing the work to meet voters where they are and earning every vote, underscoring the enormous stakes of this election and continuing to put in the work necessary to win next November.”

Kahlil Greene, also known as the “Gen-Z Historian” on social media, said he attended several White House events and that they helped him better educate his followers on what the administration is doing on specific issues.

But he also warned that if Biden wants to work with social media influencers to help amplify his campaign messaging as he did in 2020, the president and his team have to give social media influencers the creative freedom they need to make videos that feel authentic to their followers.

He added that if Biden is too “heavy-handed” at giving influencers talking points on what to say, it will do “more harm than good.”

Israel-Hamas war plays major role in influencers’ support

Some influencers who are on the fence about continuing to support Biden have voiced frustration about the language the president has used to describe the violence happening in Gaza or answer questions on how many Palestinians have died during the ongoing conflict.

Last week, the US played a role in brokering a deal between Israel and Hamas that has resulted in a pause in the fighting so aid could enter Gaza and hostages held by Hamas could be released. White House and Israeli officials have said that Biden was personally involved in getting the deal done.

Still, these recent developments are too little too late, according to some influencers.

Joel Bervell, a social media influencer with 679,000 followers on TikTok, noted he feels the Biden administration has accomplished several things since being in office, such as creating a White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention and addressing the Black maternal mortality crisis, but said that the president could be doing more to help the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

“The administration can do so much more. And they’re not doing enough right now when it comes to making sure that hospitals aren’t bombed … and that civilians are being protected,” said Bervell, who is also a part of the White House Office of Public Engagement’s Health Care Leaders in Social Media.

George Lee Jr., who is known as Conscious Lee on social media platforms and has 2.4 million followers on TikTok, said he is still unsure about whether he will help Biden in his reelection efforts. He pointed to the president’s lack of support for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war and wants to see more done on canceling student loan debt.

“We can allocate $10 billion to our military, send part of that military budget over to Israel, but we chastise Americans that are eating sleep for dinner. … We can’t get no student loan debt (forgiveness), but you’re giving (Israel) billions of dollars?” said Lee, who was invited last year to the State of the Union Address watch party at the White House. Biden’s signature student loan forgiveness program – which would have canceled up to $20,000 in student loan debt for qualified borrowers – was struck down by the Supreme Court in June.

Campaign set to ramp up its partnerships with influencers

A Biden senior campaign adviser told CNN that the campaign plans to scale up its efforts on working with social media influencers to connect with young audiences before the election. When Biden ran in the 2020 presidential election cycle, he had nearly a dozen staffers solely focused on working on its influencer program, and the adviser said the campaign plans to keep dedicated staffers to work on the program this time around.

The adviser added that in addition to working with social media influencers with big platforms, they also want to work with regional content creators and people with smaller followings who can speak to what Biden is doing on regional issues and how it impacts their local communities.

“We spent a lot of time in 2020 focusing on sort of the biggest tier of content creators,” the adviser said. “As we move into this cycle, I think we’re thinking a lot about is folks who have smaller audiences, niche audiences, that can kind of get into nooks and crannies for communities that our campaign cant traditionally get into,” he said.

The Biden campaign team ramping up their social media efforts is not surprising after new data from the Pew Research Center released earlier this month found that most young Americans find out what’s happening in the news through TikTok.

About a third of Americans ranging from the ages of 18 to 29 say that they get their news from TikTok, according to the study. Overall, the number of Americans who say they get their news from TikTok has grown considerably, from 3% in 2020 to 14% in 2023.

Some influencers staying steadfast in their support of Biden

Olivia Julianna, activist and social media influencer who has 644,000 followers on TikTok, says she is “unapologetic” in her support for the Biden administration because she would not have been able to go to college if it wasn’t for the passage of the American Rescue Plan that provided emergency financial aid grants to eligible students.

“For me as a young person … the trajectory of my life was changed because of policy that this administration passed,” said Julianna, who has attended multiple events at the White House and is actively working with the Biden campaign team.

Julianna added: “When I hear people say things like, ‘They haven’t done enough for young people. They don’t care about young people. They’re not doing anything for young people,’ it frustrates me so deeply because not only have they done a substantial amount for young people, but they did it with such a slim majority in Congress.”

V Spehar, a social media influencer with 3 million followers on TikTok, told CNN that they plan to continue supporting Biden’s reelection efforts because he supports upholding and protecting same-sex marriage rights and accomplished some of his promises on climate change.

“Biden has undeniably done incredible things that I’m not sure anyone else could get through,” they said, referring to Biden signing the Inflation Reduction Act into law and about the president helping broker the hostage negotiation agreement.

However, Spehar noted that they do not plan on making videos about the presidential candidates until after the primary elections.

Claire Simon, the communications coordinator for Gen-Z for Change, a national youth-led organization that was once known as the TikTok for Biden, said that it is not enough for Biden to meet young people where they are on social media platforms; it also is crucial for him to align with them on policy issues.

“Biden can come to where young people are virtually, but he asked him to meet us where we’re at ideologically for that strategy to really be effective like he wants it to be,” Simon said.

The-CNN-Wire
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