The Most Powerful Politics Influencers Barely Post About Politics
Donald Trump’s appearances on the podcasts of Joe Rogan and Theo Von, among others, were seen by many as a key to securing his second term.
But while Trump was speculating about extraterrestrial life on Mars with Rogan, he had a team of acolytes appearing on dozens, if not hundreds, of much smaller, niche podcasts hosted by right-wing content creators who generally don’t talk about politics.
This is how, just six days before the elections, Kash Patel, the man who is now struggling to lead the FBI, ended up appearing on television. Deplorable discussions livestream, a QAnon-infused fringe show hosted on a platform called Pilled.
“The deep state exists,” Patel told the audience. “It’s a one-party Democratic-Republican swamp monster machine.”
At the time, there was no hard evidence behind an idea that the Trump campaign seemed to instinctively understand: Social media creators, especially those who typically don’t talk about politics, have an extraordinary ability to influence their audiences.
We now have this proof.
A new report, shared exclusively with WIRED and released today by researchers at Columbia and Harvard, is the first study of its kind designed to measure the impact online influencers and creators can have on their audiences.
The study was conducted among 4,716 Americans ages 18 to 45, most of whom were randomly assigned a list of progressive content creators to follow. For five months, from August to December 2024, these creators produced nonpartisan content designed to educate their followers rather than explicitly advocate a specific political point of view.
The results showed that exposure to these progressive-minded creators not only increased general political knowledge, but also shifted their followers’ political and partisan views to the left.
In contrast, a placebo group that had no creators to follow but was allowed to browse social media normally “showed significant rightward movement,” which the researchers said was related to the right-wing nature of social media.
For the study authors and experts who reviewed the research, the findings confirm that not only are influencers now potentially more powerful than traditional media, but content creators who rarely share political content may be the most powerful of all.
“The research solidifies what many people have hypothesized, which is that content creators are a powerful force in politics, and they’re certainly going to play an important role in the 2026 midterms, and they’ll play an even bigger role in the 2028 elections,” says Samuel Woolley, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh who studies digital propaganda and who reviewed the research.
The political paradox
In addition to trying to prove that social media influencers can shape public opinion, the researchers also wanted to know whether these creators were more or less influential when their content was more overtly political.
To do this, the researchers randomly assigned study participants a list of creators to follow, with some assigned creators who post primarily about political issues, while others were assigned creators whose output is predominantly apolitical.
