Politics

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The Democratic National Convention organizers really rolled out the blue carpet for influencers this year. Today on the show, WIRED senior reporter Makena Kelly joins from Chicago to talk about the Democrats’ strategy of favoring creators over journalists, and whether it will help them win votes. Plus, behind the scenes at the influencer after-parties.

The Kamala Harris campaign is launching its own Twitch channel, where it will be streaming the vice president’s acceptance speech on Thursday.

The Twitch channel is part of the campaign’s broader strategy for engaging young and difficult-to-reach voters online. The account, which is under the handle of “kamalaharris,” joins the campaign’s suite of social and streaming accounts on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube.

“The VP’s address tonight will be one of the biggest moments of the entire campaign thus far—and we’re making sure we’re bringing her live to voters wherever they may be, Twitch included,” Seth Schuster, a Harris spokesperson, told WIRED in a statement. “Our job as the campaign is to break through a historically personalized media landscape, taking the VP and her vision for the future directly to the hardest-to-reach voters and those who will decide this election.”

It’s Democratic National Convention Week! For all the politicians, delegates, journalists, and influencers in Chicago this week, that means days of nonstop events, speeches, parties, and networking.

I’ve been on the ground covering it with my colleague, senior security writer Dhruv Mehrotra (More from Dhruv below). Some of the events have been expected: Barack Obama’s speech, organizing seminars, and caucus meetings. But others feel more like Vidcon events than political ones, like the highly-anticipated Hotties for Harris after-party on Tuesday night.

Yacht parties, free snacks, and multiple lounges: This is what the Democratic National Convention in Chicago looks like so far for the influencers and creators invited. For the first time ever, 200 creators have been credentialed to cover the convention as part of the Democrats’ attempt to reach young voters. But while they’re receiving the VIP treatment, credentialed journalists are struggling to find an outlet to plug in their laptops.

Former president Donald Trump has shared AI-generated images that falsely claim Taylor Swift fans are supporting his campaign.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump shared screenshots of four posts on X that purport to show a number of young women all wearing “Swifties for Trump” T-shirts in a variety of styles. One of the screenshots claimed that Swifties are supporting Trump now after Taylor Swift canceled her concert in Vienna due to security concerns. Another image included the phrase “Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump.”

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Team Trump was winning the internet until the Harris–Walz campaign took over. But Democrats can’t just keep calling Republicans “weird” and celebrating Brat Summer until Election Day. Today on the show, writer and critic Hunter Harris on how Kamala Harris is harnessing social media, and what comes next in the run-up to November.

Influencers have never been more important to electoral politics. They’re tastemakers, meme sharers, video creators, and organizers; they also wield significant power when it comes to encouraging their followers to vote. That’s why we built a visual and interactive list of influencers and content creators from the right and the left, where you can see how their followings compare to one another and how they’re connected to this election.

The list we put together here likely includes some creators you know and others you might not: Ever since the 2020 election, the internet has become increasingly fragmented and personalized with social media algorithms creating bespoke feeds for each user. We put together this list to show who’s who in politics in communities across the internet.

This is a very exciting day! In addition to a fresh makeover for this newsletter, I just published a new project today outlining some of the biggest names in online political influencing from both the right and the left.

Over the past week, I crowdsourced the names of some of the top meme accounts, TikTokkers, and podcasters from across the political spectrum, and we built this interactive list. You’ll probably see some faces you recognize from your own social media feeds, but with how fragmented and personalized social media has become in recent years, it’s nearly impossible for the average internet user to keep up with everyone. This list can serve as a sampling for what’s out there in the world of digital politics, from micro influencers to mega celebrities.

When Donald Trump’s presidential campaign publicly stated last week that it had been successfully targeted by Iranian hackers, the news may have initially seemed like a sign that the Middle Eastern country was particularly focused on the candidate whom it perceived to take the most hawkish approach to its regime. It’s since become clearer that Iran has had the Democrats in the sights of its cyber operations, too. Now Google’s cybersecurity analysts have confirmed that both campaigns were targeted not simply by Iran but by the same group of hackers working in service of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Pinned on vice president and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ official Instagram page is a post featuring her alongside her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz. In the comments, along with praise, criticism, and more than one “Trump 2024,” are several comments asking if Harris had offered Walz oral sex, with one calling her “Kamel toe.”

Harris has long been the subject of online abuse, which is likely to intensify as her campaign wears on. But a new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit that tracks hate speech and misinformation online, found that Instagram failed to remove 93 percent of the 1,000 hateful and violent comments it flagged to the platform targeting both Republican and Democratic female politicians, including Harris.