UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — When Kamala Harris announced her candidacy for president, two questions were at the forefront of social media memes: Who would she select for her running mate, and had Maya Rudolph cleared her schedule to reprise her Harris impression for Saturday Night Live?
Politics permeates pop culture, and vice versa, especially during presidential elections. Penn State News spoke with three faculty experts to learn more about how people can best parse politics in pop culture, as well as how to take care in a saturated media landscape.
Wael Jabr, assistant professor of supply chain and information systems at the Penn State Smeal College of Business, studies, among other topics, how social media shapes political discourse.
Michele Ramsey, associate professor of communication art and sciences and of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Penn State Berks, researches representations of gender in the media as well as rhetoric on women’s rights, social movements and politics.
S. Shyam Sundar, Evan Pugh University Professor and the James P. Jimirro Professor of Media Effects in the Penn State Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications, investigates the uses and effects of digital media, online news sources, fake news and misinformation, social media effects and the social and psychological aspects of artificial intelligence.
Q: Can celebrities and social media influencers like Taylor Swift sway voters? How do influencers compare to the impact of traditional media on politics?
Jabr: Celebrities and social media influencers can, and quite often do, sway voters. Some feel an obligation to weigh in on political matters. Others weigh in on social matters that have a strong influence on elections.
While we’re used to influencers like Taylor Swift with a huge following of more than a quarter of a billion Instagram users, we’re witnessing more recently a newer type of “micro-influencer” with a follower base of just a few thousand. These influencers are closer to the pulse of the community. They are interested in local issues, such as potholes on their main street or how to support their local eateries. So, when they make a political statement, it resonates with their followers.
Influence is a combination of things: the more I hear it, the more valid I believe it is; if I hear it from different sources, that is also impactful. There is also the on-demand feature of social media and its infinite scrolling. These influencers have a megaphone that amplifies information. Take for example this experiment on Twitter in Denmark from a couple years ago. The researchers concluded that when we are repeatedly exposed to an idea, typically from many sources, we are more likely to adopt it and reshare it, what psychologists call the repeated exposure effect.
Sundar: Celebrities may not directly tell their fans how to vote, but they can leverage their popularity to shape politics in other ways. They often publicly endorse candidates and platform positions. They can provide star power for political fund-raising events. This can mean a lot in the political process and automatically gives them a voice. For example, when George Clooney wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times urging President Biden to relinquish his candidacy for the 2024 elections, one of the first things Clooney mentioned was his successful fund-raising efforts for Democratic Party candidates.
Q: How does the personalization of a social media newsfeed skew a person’s perception of political issues?
Ramsey: Now that media has become so siloed, meaning that we all see things in our algorithms that reflect and encourage what we already believe and like, our perceptions of cultural and political issues are no longer common. It has always been the case that we have different opinions on the things happening in our country, but we generally shared the same media and thus also a similar reality. Algorithms and their impact on what we see has changed that. We have entire populations that do not even share the same reality. As such, it is not just the case that perceptions of political issues are skewed these days because of social media. Now perceptions of reality itself are skewed — and in many cases, just plain incorrect.
How do you talk with someone who doesn’t believe something that is scientifically proven, such as climate change? How do you persuade that person? How do you counteract incorrect information that is being fed to them through an algorithm designed to make money off of their engagement rather than functioning in a way that better protects democracy? Many of the people who created tools that allow for the silo effect of social media now attempt to undo the damage their creation has done; some even formed the Center for Humane Technology to sound warning bells about the impacts of algorithms on our democracy, mental health and relationships.
Jabr: Personalization algorithms are intended to give us more of the same — the same content that we typically like and engage with. So, inherently, with the way social media algorithms work, we may be stuck in echo-chambers, in our own bubbles. Ideally, we should be able to expect that social media platforms and influencers would act ethically and in the interest of social welfare. But frankly, that is a tough ask. This is because social media is most often a numbers game — number of followers, specifically — and how to monetize them.
Now, these algorithms are available on social media but not on traditional media. Yet traditional media is also playing a numbers game for viewers, and what they can’t achieve through personalization they make up for through polarizing their reporting. This makes us all, young or old, social media aficionados or traditional media fanatics, prone to becoming siloed and to having our perceptions skewed. One has to recognize these issues to be able to overcome them.
Q: How do politics influence pop culture? How does pop culture influence politics, or the perception of politics?
Ramsey: Ideology is most powerful when it’s least visible. When we are being entertained, we are often less likely to critically assess the ideologies about things like race, class and sex/gender, or a specific political issue, because it’s “just entertainment.” As a result, we may be more easily influenced by a popular song or film narrative than, say, a political advertisement where ideologies are more clearly communicated and expected. We need to understand the ideological power of the media to influence our ideas about who we are, who we want to be and how we see the world.
Popular culture helps shape our views of the world and its politics through what stories we choose to pay attention to in things like television, film, music and social media posts on platforms like TikTok. At the same time, people tasked with the job of making sure politicians are relatable to voters are going to pay attention to popular culture and make attempts to connect themselves to memes, people, trends or whatever else in the media people are paying attention to, whether positive or negative. Conversely, some popular culture can obfuscate issues and confuse people — unintentionally or purposefully — and some can shed light on issues and help people see things they didn’t see before, whether those things are true or not.
Q: The election cycle can feel overwhelming, especially as it permeates traditional and social media. What is mindfulness and how might it be applied during the election cycle?
Sundar: The election cycle is overwhelming in that it adds to the information overload that social media users are already struggling with on their phones and other devices. This kind of overload situation is known to encourage mindless consumption of information. People may not pay close attention to the sources or veracity of information. They are more likely to fall for fake news. They may not stop to think that their social media friends are not trained in journalism and therefore do not know how to vet or verify facts. So, the solution is not to endlessly scroll through your feeds on your mobile devices, but to be more mindful in consuming political news. One strategy would be to subscribe to a manageable set of professional news sources. If these sources have known political biases, then it would be a good idea to factor that in when consuming information from them. It would also be a good idea to subscribe to a politically diverse set of news sources to gain a better perspective.
Jabr: Mindfulness for me starts with trying to break the algorithmic bubble that we can get stuck in. The way to do that is through injecting some randomness in our choices to “trip” that algorithm. If my views lean to the left or to the right, it helps to click on content from the opposing side, which may lead the algorithm to think I am more centrist.
Mindfulness can also be done through setting limits. Because social media allows infinite scrolling, one can keep scrolling for an endless time, so one has to make sure they take breaks.
I also recommend maintaining contact with nature and maintaining social contacts with family and with friends: Take breaks from the media and have walks in the park, attend social events and so on.
For more information or to speak with one of our election experts, visit media.psu.edu or contact mediarelations@psu.edu.