How social media is playing a new role in presidential campaigns
Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign has millions of followers on TikTok, while former President Donald Trump has focused on his millions of followers on Truth Social.
Courtesy TikTok and Truth Social
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When you think about a political campaign ad or marketing, your mind probably doesn’t go straight to TikTok and Instagram. Most of the U.S. population grew up with an onslaught of television or radio ads during election season.
But social media has brought a new dimension to reaching voters. And for the first time, it seems that campaigns are doing it well.
The campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris, known as Kamala HQ has 3.4 million followers and more than 75 million likes across all of their videos on TikTok. By comparison, Team Trump, the campaign for former President Donald Trump, has 210,000 followers on TikTok and nearly 200,000 likes, though Trump does have more than 7 million followers on Truth Social.
To understand how social media is playing a new role in reaching voters, MPR News reached out to April Eichmeier, an assistant professor of Emerging Media at the University of St. Thomas who is an expert on political messaging.
Use the audio player above to listen to the full conversation.
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Audio transcript
CATHY WURZER: Say, when you think about a political campaign ad or marketing, your mind probably doesn't go straight to TikTok and Instagram. Most of the US population grew up with an onslaught of television or radio ads during election season. But social media has brought a new dimension to reaching voters. And for the first time, it seems that campaigns are doing it pretty well. The Kamala Harris campaign account known as Kamala HQ has 3.4 million followers and more than 75 million likes across all of their videos on TikTok.
By comparison, team Trump, the Trump campaign TikTok account, has 210,000 followers and nearly 200,000 likes, though Trump does have 7 million followers on his platform, Truth Social. To understand how social media is playing a new role in reaching voters, we reached out to April Eichner-- Eichmeier, excuse me-- April Eichmeier, an assistant professor of emerging media at the University of St. Thomas, who's an expert on political messaging. Professor, thanks for taking the time.
APRIL EICHMEIER: Of course. Happy to be here.
CATHY WURZER: Let's set the stage, OK? I'm sure you saw the Pew survey released earlier this year, found Americans' experiences with politics on social media often depend on the platforms that they use, from TikTok and X to Facebook and Instagram. And the company's policies shape the political environment that folks enter when they log on. How do you see that as potentially problematic?
APRIL EICHMEIER: So campaigns, of course, have to adjust based on which platform they're on. And from the campaign manager's perspective, that highly complicates things much more so than in the broadcast era when you ran a television commercial or a sponsorship on the radio. So it just makes the-- you know, a tougher job for the campaigns, for sure.
CATHY WURZER: I wonder how social media influencers connecting to younger voters who are harder to reach through traditional advertising, how are they doing?
APRIL EICHMEIER: How are influencers doing?
CATHY WURZER: Yeah.
APRIL EICHMEIER: I think it depends on which influencers we're talking about. One of the most difficult things, from a research perspective in particular, is that there's so many influencers. And so when we try to measure who's influencing and who's very popular, it's really very a fractured audience. And so while you have one audience who follows a particular influencer and another audience following another influencer, it's very difficult to judge how effective they're being.
CATHY WURZER: Have you noticed that this particular presidential election cycle, especially on TikTok, using more user generated content, it's like-- it's kind of like free advertising for the candidates, right?
APRIL EICHMEIER: It is and it isn't, and that's an excellent point that you bring up. So the campaigns, of course, design around generating the most positive activity that they can online. The problem is that social media is kind of-- people can mix up messages, make new content. Campaigns, of course, hope that the content that influencers make is favorable to the campaign but of course, they have no control over that.
When I teach social media campaigns, I often say one of the questions that all campaign managers, especially on social media, but need to be asking, what could possibly go wrong? How could this be misinterpreted? So while television advertising and you know, radio advertising, when the campaigns controlled things, there was less, you know, perhaps less error, but-- or less room for-- more room for error. Pardon me. But now, there's even there's less room for error with every move.
CATHY WURZER: I'm seeing a lot of memes of the candidates, and it appears that some of the campaigns are making their own memes, which seems interesting-- [LAUGHS] --in that Minnesota way of using the word interesting.
APRIL EICHMEIER: Yes, exactly. [LAUGHS]
CATHY WURZER: What does that mean?
APRIL EICHMEIER: So anytime a campaign is making its own meme, it is, of course, taking a risk. Memes are very-- they can be spread very quickly, but the hard part about memes-- and honestly, it's because memes can have double meanings. And if you're not precisely knowledgeable enough about what the meme is, it could possibly fly over the top of a potential audience member's head. So of course, the campaign trusts-- perhaps has research on what its audience already knows. But when they put things out and they put memes out, I'm sure it's very considered. You would certainly have to--
CATHY WURZER: Right.
APRIL EICHMEIER: --hoping that it gets the reaction that you desire.
CATHY WURZER: So looking at the Kamala Harris campaign versus the Donald Trump campaign on social media, Trump may not be on TikTok, but he has that fairly hefty following on his Truth Social. But I'm noticing spending on Facebook and Instagram for him, not nearly as much as the Harris campaign is spending at this point. He's also not as present on TikTok and X. What's the strategy to concentrate his efforts on Truth Social?
APRIL EICHMEIER: So whether it's the Harris campaign focusing on TikTok or Donald Trump on Truth Social, the fact is that they are trying to appeal to the people who are most likely to come out and vote. You might hear that called the base. But you want to reach the people who are very much fans and who will show up on election day.
CATHY WURZER: Because-- let's talk about TikTok here with the Kamala HQ account, which is getting millions of views.
APRIL EICHMEIER: Yes.
CATHY WURZER: So how might that be different from traditional TV and radio ad reach?
APRIL EICHMEIER: Right. So Kamala HQ, of course-- well, I would say-- let me back up for a moment. The key issue between a traditional campaign and a social media campaign is the algorithms. And so somebody who has expressed perhaps Democratic leanings and they're on TikTok, their algorithm is going to give them pro-Harris, Walz content. Someone on TikTok who has expressed conservative views is going to get more pro-Trump content.
But as a one person experiment, earlier today, I went and I tried to-- I opened up a TikTok account as though it was fresh and new, and I really tried hard to find anti-Harris, Trump-- or pardon me-- anti-Harris, Walz content, and it was a little more-- it was difficult. But I think that also speaks to the Harris Walz campaign really wanting to reach young people who are often on TikTok, a very high concentration of Gen Z on TikTok.
CATHY WURZER: Mmhmm. So I don't know, this might seem like a silly question, but are radio and TV ads dead in the water, or is there still a role for them?
APRIL EICHMEIER: Not at all. They are not dead at all because modern marketing campaigns are integrated. And so what happens on TikTok, you know, ends up discussed on television, what happens on the advertising that is produced. Any campaign ad is going to be on YouTube. It's going to run on, you know, on legacy media during, you know, the news hour, or during prime time, or during programming.
And so the goal of this, of all the campaigns is to get these things-- to get these media to work together to form an impression of the candidate that the campaign finds desirable. And of course, the opposite is also true. They want to frame the other candidate in a way through multimedia that makes that candidate less likely to win.
CATHY WURZER: I have about 40 seconds left here. What will you be watching for in the coming 85 days?
APRIL EICHMEIER: In terms of media?
CATHY WURZER: Yeah.
APRIL EICHMEIER: It would be really interesting to see how the Trump campaign, if they can pivot because there's a lot of energy on the Democratic side. And I-- I've, you know, just based on my own observations and hearing news reports, is that it's been very hard for the Trump campaign to get something to stick to the Harris campaign. Now, what happens in November is anyone's guess. We won't know how effective the campaigns were until it's over, which is a hard part about planning any campaign. But, you know, I'll just be looking to see what the dynamics are.
CATHY WURZER: All right. Professor, thank you.
APRIL EICHMEIER: Of course. Thank you.
CATHY WURZER: April Eichmeier is an assistant professor of emerging media at the University of St. Thomas.
By comparison, team Trump, the Trump campaign TikTok account, has 210,000 followers and nearly 200,000 likes, though Trump does have 7 million followers on his platform, Truth Social. To understand how social media is playing a new role in reaching voters, we reached out to April Eichner-- Eichmeier, excuse me-- April Eichmeier, an assistant professor of emerging media at the University of St. Thomas, who's an expert on political messaging. Professor, thanks for taking the time.
APRIL EICHMEIER: Of course. Happy to be here.
CATHY WURZER: Let's set the stage, OK? I'm sure you saw the Pew survey released earlier this year, found Americans' experiences with politics on social media often depend on the platforms that they use, from TikTok and X to Facebook and Instagram. And the company's policies shape the political environment that folks enter when they log on. How do you see that as potentially problematic?
APRIL EICHMEIER: So campaigns, of course, have to adjust based on which platform they're on. And from the campaign manager's perspective, that highly complicates things much more so than in the broadcast era when you ran a television commercial or a sponsorship on the radio. So it just makes the-- you know, a tougher job for the campaigns, for sure.
CATHY WURZER: I wonder how social media influencers connecting to younger voters who are harder to reach through traditional advertising, how are they doing?
APRIL EICHMEIER: How are influencers doing?
CATHY WURZER: Yeah.
APRIL EICHMEIER: I think it depends on which influencers we're talking about. One of the most difficult things, from a research perspective in particular, is that there's so many influencers. And so when we try to measure who's influencing and who's very popular, it's really very a fractured audience. And so while you have one audience who follows a particular influencer and another audience following another influencer, it's very difficult to judge how effective they're being.
CATHY WURZER: Have you noticed that this particular presidential election cycle, especially on TikTok, using more user generated content, it's like-- it's kind of like free advertising for the candidates, right?
APRIL EICHMEIER: It is and it isn't, and that's an excellent point that you bring up. So the campaigns, of course, design around generating the most positive activity that they can online. The problem is that social media is kind of-- people can mix up messages, make new content. Campaigns, of course, hope that the content that influencers make is favorable to the campaign but of course, they have no control over that.
When I teach social media campaigns, I often say one of the questions that all campaign managers, especially on social media, but need to be asking, what could possibly go wrong? How could this be misinterpreted? So while television advertising and you know, radio advertising, when the campaigns controlled things, there was less, you know, perhaps less error, but-- or less room for-- more room for error. Pardon me. But now, there's even there's less room for error with every move.
CATHY WURZER: I'm seeing a lot of memes of the candidates, and it appears that some of the campaigns are making their own memes, which seems interesting-- [LAUGHS] --in that Minnesota way of using the word interesting.
APRIL EICHMEIER: Yes, exactly. [LAUGHS]
CATHY WURZER: What does that mean?
APRIL EICHMEIER: So anytime a campaign is making its own meme, it is, of course, taking a risk. Memes are very-- they can be spread very quickly, but the hard part about memes-- and honestly, it's because memes can have double meanings. And if you're not precisely knowledgeable enough about what the meme is, it could possibly fly over the top of a potential audience member's head. So of course, the campaign trusts-- perhaps has research on what its audience already knows. But when they put things out and they put memes out, I'm sure it's very considered. You would certainly have to--
CATHY WURZER: Right.
APRIL EICHMEIER: --hoping that it gets the reaction that you desire.
CATHY WURZER: So looking at the Kamala Harris campaign versus the Donald Trump campaign on social media, Trump may not be on TikTok, but he has that fairly hefty following on his Truth Social. But I'm noticing spending on Facebook and Instagram for him, not nearly as much as the Harris campaign is spending at this point. He's also not as present on TikTok and X. What's the strategy to concentrate his efforts on Truth Social?
APRIL EICHMEIER: So whether it's the Harris campaign focusing on TikTok or Donald Trump on Truth Social, the fact is that they are trying to appeal to the people who are most likely to come out and vote. You might hear that called the base. But you want to reach the people who are very much fans and who will show up on election day.
CATHY WURZER: Because-- let's talk about TikTok here with the Kamala HQ account, which is getting millions of views.
APRIL EICHMEIER: Yes.
CATHY WURZER: So how might that be different from traditional TV and radio ad reach?
APRIL EICHMEIER: Right. So Kamala HQ, of course-- well, I would say-- let me back up for a moment. The key issue between a traditional campaign and a social media campaign is the algorithms. And so somebody who has expressed perhaps Democratic leanings and they're on TikTok, their algorithm is going to give them pro-Harris, Walz content. Someone on TikTok who has expressed conservative views is going to get more pro-Trump content.
But as a one person experiment, earlier today, I went and I tried to-- I opened up a TikTok account as though it was fresh and new, and I really tried hard to find anti-Harris, Trump-- or pardon me-- anti-Harris, Walz content, and it was a little more-- it was difficult. But I think that also speaks to the Harris Walz campaign really wanting to reach young people who are often on TikTok, a very high concentration of Gen Z on TikTok.
CATHY WURZER: Mmhmm. So I don't know, this might seem like a silly question, but are radio and TV ads dead in the water, or is there still a role for them?
APRIL EICHMEIER: Not at all. They are not dead at all because modern marketing campaigns are integrated. And so what happens on TikTok, you know, ends up discussed on television, what happens on the advertising that is produced. Any campaign ad is going to be on YouTube. It's going to run on, you know, on legacy media during, you know, the news hour, or during prime time, or during programming.
And so the goal of this, of all the campaigns is to get these things-- to get these media to work together to form an impression of the candidate that the campaign finds desirable. And of course, the opposite is also true. They want to frame the other candidate in a way through multimedia that makes that candidate less likely to win.
CATHY WURZER: I have about 40 seconds left here. What will you be watching for in the coming 85 days?
APRIL EICHMEIER: In terms of media?
CATHY WURZER: Yeah.
APRIL EICHMEIER: It would be really interesting to see how the Trump campaign, if they can pivot because there's a lot of energy on the Democratic side. And I-- I've, you know, just based on my own observations and hearing news reports, is that it's been very hard for the Trump campaign to get something to stick to the Harris campaign. Now, what happens in November is anyone's guess. We won't know how effective the campaigns were until it's over, which is a hard part about planning any campaign. But, you know, I'll just be looking to see what the dynamics are.
CATHY WURZER: All right. Professor, thank you.
APRIL EICHMEIER: Of course. Thank you.
CATHY WURZER: April Eichmeier is an assistant professor of emerging media at the University of St. Thomas.
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