Gen Z-style Politics: Power & Influence in the Era of Social Media

• In Event: Poster Session: Political Communication 1 & Politics, Literature, and the Arts
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Political Communication 1

Abstract

The era of social media networks has deeply affected the relationship between political content, entertainment and political participation. While research has shown that social media use fosters political engagement, we still observe widespread low political participation, even among the young, who use social media most extensively. How can we reconcile this seemingly contrasting patterns? Another recent trend we register consists in governments and politicians taking advantage of social media influencers (and their huge resonance on social media) to spread political messages to target Gen-Zers and Millennials. For example, President Biden has recruited an “army of influencers” to boost support among young voters for 2024 elections. As political scientists, we lack an understanding of the actual effects that these messages have on people’s preferences and behaviors, both online and offline. Moreover, we don’t offer any explanation for why, and through which mechanisms, these people’s influence might expand beyond their niche into the social and political sphere. In this paper, I address these questions and I argue that influencers and brands are able to “play the representation game” in a more effective way with respect to traditional political actors, such as politicians, thanks to their expertise in mastering social media. I theorize that, triggering psychological mechanisms of aspirational identification around non-political aspects, these personalities can propose themselves as credible, reliable and trustworthy representatives of certain social claims, then becoming agenda setters in the political sphere. Given the inherently economic and personal interests behind influencers and brands’ activity, this impact the topics and issues that are prioritized and represented, ultimately affecting how political engagement is understood and conceived in the era of social media.
The paper sheds light of the role that political content on social media, channeled through non-political actors, has in shaping young adults’ political identity and their conceptualization of political activism. In particular, I study the impact that these contents have on Millennials and Gen-Zers, in terms of values, preferences and behaviors. This work contributes to the understanding of how social media and its main actors, with their ingrained economic, political and psychological incentives, affect the way young people socialize themselves into the political process and will help us to predict the future of political engagement and participation, both in the virtual and real world.

Author

• Beatrice Bonini