|
Influencers reviewed by the Pew Research Center talked about
Trump and Harris on social media about equally, but there were
more posts about Trump and they tended to be more favorable.
Pew said roughly 20% of Americans regularly get news from
influencers — podcasters, commentators and the like — and about
two-thirds said it helps them better understand things. Pew
analyzed more than 150,000 posts from about 500 influencers,
defined as those who regularly comment on current events and
have at least 100,000 followers on some combination of Facebook,
Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube.
Trump courted this youth-oriented sector more actively than
Harris did during the campaign. He was interviewed by the
popular podcaster Joe Rogan, for example, while Harris did not
get an appearance there.
The study found an equal amount of influencers — 42% — were
critical of either the Republican or Democratic candidate for
president.
Yet Trump earned his edge in volume; his supporters posted more
often than Harris'. As an example, twice as many total posts
about Harris on the Elon Musk-owned X site were critical than
they were positive, while the ratio for Trump was more evenly
split, Pew said.
And X is where most of the political influencers lived. Pew
found that 79% of the political posts were on that site. On X,
48% of the influencers who posted there identified themselves as
right-leaning, while 28% said they were more liberal.
On average, right-leaning news influencers posted 183 times per
week. The more liberal ones posted 72 times on average, Pew
said.
All contents © copyright 2025 Associated Press. All rights reserved
|
|
