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Gen Z influencers who supported Biden in 2020 turn against him (www.washingtonpost.com)

submitted 5 months ago by gAlienLifeform to c/progressivepolitics

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Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20240613115802/https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/06/13/influencers-biden-tiktok-ban/

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[–] Carrolade 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

What angers her is the president’s failure to engage with Gen Z influencers’ substantive concerns, she said — though she acknowledged that the White House climate office recently contacted her directly regarding a pause in the approval of new liquefied natural gas projects.

“I prefer having a meaty climate strategy conversation

I think that's the most important takeaway here. We're not used to having to get deeply into the weeds with public outreach, it's frankly discouraged in the traditional media ecosystem where preference is to boil things down into simpler, easier to understand talking points.

That's not the way the modern information ecosystem operates though, there's no longer the same degree of profit motive and ensuing oversimplification. This is the wikipedia rabbit hole generation, density is often welcome.

This problem is highlighted earlier in the article where they mention not knowing if content creators are more like traditional journalists, or its more just about pay for views. The answer is its both, plus more on top. Some are academically inclined, some are organizationally inclined, some are propaganda, some are journalism, etc etc.

So, the team moving forward is going to need more than one singular, unified method for its outreach, and is going to need more of a shotgun approach that can accommodate differently-motivated creators with different methods and mindsets.

[–] flicker 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I mean I'm glad that current generations want more. I hope they can drag discourse to where it should be!

But I agree that there's definitely a disconnect on what's been expected from a campaign, up until now.

Historically, campaigns are just one dude and his apparatus shouting their thoughts. A campaign isn't a conversation. It should be. Honestly I wish we. could securely run a platform of "every single one of our choices will be a poll online for a month beforehand."

[–] Carrolade 0 points 5 months ago

I disagree a little bit. I think townhalls are an example of a dialogue between a candidate and their constituency, and used to have a bigger role before broadcast technology was invented, so, most of our history. It's also a core concept in democracy for the leadership to pay heed to the voters wishes.

The disconnect I see is in communication, where the campaign has struggled to explain the reasoning behind its decisions. I think the easiest remedy would be to tap more of the administration's experts. Instead of trying to boil down the Gazan situation to soundbites, the administration could simply tap some of the policy wonks from the State Dept. Take one of the analysts that specializes in Middle East affairs and be like "okay, so, can you go talk to so-and-so for this afternoon and give them the rundown on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and our strategy? thanks Bob." Not really Bob's job of course, but it needs to be done. This would be instead of relying on any pre-existing communications experts. The influencer is a communications expert, they lack the policy expertise perspective, which is largely unavailable to most everyday citizens.