Are Celebrities The Next Political Disruptor?
In 2018, career politicians have the right to be pissed off. Having built a career around politics, spending a ridiculously long time and huge amount of effort getting to a point where they can run in an election just to be beat in the polls by a celebrity who thinks they can do better. Many industries today are being threatened or obliterated by new superior technologies. Taxi drivers for example, who’ve sacrificed a lot of time and money to earn their position, which is now more than threatened by applications like Uber. As is with most disruptive technologies, the new innovation has won because it is simply a better option for consumers. In politics, however, this may not be true.
Donald Trump can be given the title of the first political disruptor of this nature. With the majority of his political experience consisting of buying and selling politicians and bureaucrats to clear or resolve regulations for his own corporate gain, it is fair to argue that Donald Trump skipped many of the arguably necessary steps that most successful politicians take to get to Presidential Nominee, and used his established celebrity reputation to get the attention of voters.
This is not to say, however, that the traditional political system is flawless. In a old, white, boy’s club of a political system, rife with discrimination and exclusivity, politicians like Kamala Harris, Niki Ashton, and Jagmeet Singh have had to work even harder than the majority of their rivals. Celebrities as presidents is a grim future filled with more of the flashy media entertainment of the Trump era, so like all industries that overcame a technological disruption, these career politicians need to adapt to the changes in times and embrace social media in order to win elections.
With Elections Canada figures showing that millennials and generation Xers will represent two-thirds of the electorate in 2019 — millennials forming the largest single voting bloc — politicians are quickly realizing the newfound importance of attracting the youth vote. This burst of young voters is largely thanks to Social Media, and thus is the way to their hearts. This may seem easy, but having grown up with social media, millennials are not easy to fool. We can see right through the dabbing, nae naes, and twitter scraps. While these social media publicity attempts to relate to young voters still generate buzz, this duplicitous marketing lacks the authenticity that youth voters are looking for in today’s increasingly transparent world.
Celebrities like The Rock, Oprah, or even political celebrity Justin Trudeau, already have this authenticity and awareness among youth. They won’t need to waste time learning how to use social media, gaining a following, and marketing themselves to the public because their celebrity career already achieved this. Voters have sentiment to these celebrities and may not see the distinction between their favourite movie star and the required characteristics of a World Leader.
Even though they are not celebrities themselves, career politicians can take advantage of this demand from voters for celebrities in politics by forming public relationships with celebrities that allow for an awareness and reputation amongst untapped voters. A successful example of this is recently elected Mayor of Atlanta, Keisha Lance Bottoms, who countered political endorsements and changing demographics by having Atlanta celebrities such as Big Boi, Killer Mike, T.I., Kandi Burruss, Ludacris, and 2 Chainz post social media videos endorsing Bottoms. Even celebrities from other cities such as Jamie Foxx, Common and Gabrielle Union supported Bottoms on social media.
Because we live in a new digital world where we are constantly bombarded with information and it is very difficult to filter for deception and bias, social media and celebrity endorsement is sometimes the only way for voters to relate to a candidate. Social media is even sometimes the only exposure a politician will get amongst certain crowds, especially youth.
Exposure is crucial when it comes to winning the youth vote. Justin Trudeau, whom is of course a career politician but whom also has had the advantage of growing up in the public eye and had either the luck or a great strategist that meant that most of the media buzz about him was focused on non-campaign related content such as his looks, his family, and his honestly fairly standard positive statements about commonly marginalized groups. Most people know of him through these fluff pieces and know very little about his actual politics.
Trudeau is not the only Canadian politician to have global news features overshadow his politics recently. Rob Ford was at one point the most relevant Canadian news piece. His scandals spread across various social media like a virus, making a mere Toronto Mayor world famous. After his death, much of his wrongs were seemingly forgiven in favor of pity. In 2018, with the advantage of a widely-known family name, Rob’s brother Doug Ford has recently entered the race for Ontario PC leader.
In a statement he made in his mother’s basement, Ford said ”Folks, make no mistake about it, The elites of this party, the ones who have shut out the grassroots, do not want me in this race. But I’m here to give a voice to the hard-working taxpayers of this province, people who have been ignored for far too long.” This sounds horrifyingly familiar to the campaign of our monster south of the border. In times like these, demagoguery and manipulation is a heavy theme in politics. And we are not innocent in Canada.
The shameless publicity stunts of politicians making themselves either famous or infamous give them a presence on social media that is hard to compete with. Positive engagement with social media is imperative for the success of career politicians in a time of celebrity politicians. Some upcoming career politicians, fortunately, do have an advantage in this. The combined age of the NDP, Liberal, and PC candidates in Canada’s upcoming elections averages to a ripe 43 years of age. This is the youngest in the history of Canada by a significant margin. Kamala Harris, a candidate for the U.S. presidential election, will be in her fifties. All of these young politicians are sure to have a relatively wide understanding and familiarity of social media which will offer an authenticity that older candidates (Bernie Sanders excluded) have a hard time emulating.
Aside from reputation and voter engagement, social media also offers a unique opportunity for fundraising. Money bomb, a term coined in 2007 by the Ron Paul presidential campaign, is a massive donation online within a small time frame to a political campaign by a giving effort organized through social media. Fundraising strategies like this will be increasingly important in the upcoming Ontario Elections now that Political parties in Canada have been banned from receiving donations from corporations and unions. What had once represented a huge amount of funds (as well as corruption) is no longer available, and smart ontario politicians will turn to social media for the funds they need.
These prescient career politicians will need to embrace social media in an extremely innovative way in order to beat the goliath that is a celebrity opponent. Inspiration can be drawn from Jeremy Corbyn, a British politician serving as Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition since 2015. With the help of Dr. Richard Barbrook as a Digital Democracy and Games Strategist, Corbyn has developed an inventive new campaign strategy. They invited the public to a workshop of sorts called Games for the Many which they describe as a political games studio and community of political game makers working with the Labour Party exploring how to make political impact with play, developing games as digital campaigning tools.
Even more noteworthy, Corbyn encourages social media through his Digital Democracy Manifesto. Some of the most interesting promises include the following:
- “Because ubiquitous access to digital networks is now a prerequisite of 21st century life and business, we will ensure that high speed broadband and mobile connectivity is available at the same low price without any data transfer cap across the whole country. “
- “Service will provide learning resources for students of all ages to acquire the theoretical insights and practical skills for analysing and making media. Ofcom will protect network neutrality from discrimination between data streams and manipulation of software algorithms for private gain.”
- “A Digital bill of rights”
- “We will create a 21st century networked democracy where everybody can be a political decision-maker.“
This type of policy making goes beyond building reputation and awareness, but actually developing and encouraging the political climate that exists around social media. In order to be successful in future elections, career politicians can not settle for being “as good as” celebrities when it comes to social media. They will have to be better. Incorporating social media not only into their campaigns but into their policies will bring respectable world leadership into their reach. Politicians embracing social media is not only important for their gain, it is important for the survival of democracy.
