It's clear to everyone who doesn't live under a rock that social media is a powerful tool that has taken over how we communicate and spread messages. Millennials and Gen Z are considered digital natives since most of their adolescent years were exposed to the internet. For politics, this is important. "In the last decade, millennials have risen from 20% to 26% of the voting populace, and Gen Z from 0% to 9%. With such shifts, candidates must develop more sophisticated and diverse uses of online platforms." (Robinson & Henry, 2023)
In 2022, Democratic candidate John Fetterman and Republican candidate Mehmet Oz were both running for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania. Fetterman's campaign trail uniquely utilized social media to gain traction in the election. While he had a social media team helping him, he gained such popularity because his posts were directly from him or were his original ideas. Sophie Ota was the digital director for Fetterman's campaign trail and this is what she had to say about the campaign: "The most important thing is that it was authentic to our candidate. We never had to explain what a meme is to John because he knows and suggests them. We got his input every step of the way so that whatever we make feels real to him." (Ota & Latifi, 2022) This type of authenticity is valued by social media users, especially coming from a politician.
One strategy he used was starting a petition for his opponent, Oz, to be inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame. Fetterman did this as a way to point out that Oz was not a Pennsylvania native but rather a Jersey native which ultimately hurt Oz's campaign.
Fetterman's approach to utilizing social media ultimately proved successful as he ended up winning the 2022 Senate race in Pennsylvania.
Sources:
Latifi, F. (2022). John Fetterman and Social Media: How His Campaign Built a Winning Strategy. Teen Vouge. https://www.teenvogue.com/story/john-fetterman-social-media
Robinson, M. & Henry, A.W. (2023). How social media is changing politics | The TechTank Podcast. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-social-media-is-changing-politics-the-techtank-podcast/
Hey Macy, great blog post! As I've been doing my blog replies and reading other students blogs so many have focused on TikTok and social media as an aid for politicians when running for office. However, yours is the first to acknowledge the voting populace shifts and that the younger generations are gaining the majority voting power. It's no secret young people love social media and many use it as their primary news source. If politicians like Fetterman not only utilize social media, but do it in a way that is engaging and popular (like by creating a petition) then they too will see the benefits of social media, nanocasting, and shifting to new voter populaces.
ReplyDeleteI’m surprised to hear that my generation of millennials are voting more! Good news for me because it means I’m not the weirdo who was galvanized to become more involved in the political science realm after a lifetime of not. We were absolutely the party of apathy, and it became even more compounded during the George Bush Jr years and the recession that followed. I personally like Fetterman, he’s been outspoken about his mental health problems which speaks more to his authenticity as a human being, making him relatable to my generation, and I feel like he seriously represents millennials for our love of wearing sweatshirts and not caring like a normal politician would. He’s like a chaos player on the chessboard of politics, which makes him fascinating to follow. He’s been largely invisible lately in that the news media are not reporting too much about him, but I suspect because he’s hard to pin down, and does not follow one path absolutely, that might be part of the reason we hear so little of him.
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