Social Media and the 2024 presidential campaigns

NORMAL, Ill. – Social media has become an indispensable tool in political campaigns over the last couple election cycles. This election cycle, however, has seen social media be used in new ways. Illinois State University School of Communication Professor Andrew Ventimiglia explained how social media has become more prevalent in reaching out to voters.

“In the last 10 years or so, social media has been important in isolating clips,” Ventimiglia said. “For instance, isolating clips of rally speeches and circulating those and trying to have particular moments in campaigns go viral, whether or not that’s positive virality or negative.”

This election cycle, President-elect Donald Trump utilized X, formerly known as Twitter, to connect with voters. He also appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast, “Joe Rogan Experience.”

Vice-President Kamala Harris used social media with a different approach from her media team by targeting many younger voters with her TikTok page, @kamalahq. Vice President Harris also appeared on the well-known podcast “Call Her Daddy” hosted by Alex Cooper.

“If you have clips, for instance, Trump’s assassination attempt or a viral clip from a rally or a speech, those little one-minute clips can go out into social media platforms and they can circulate. People can share them, comment on them, and those things get a lot of traction and a lot of attention much more than an entire speech.” said Dr. Ventimiglia.

Ventimiglia explained that a constant struggle is getting young voters to turn out and actually cast their ballots. Campaigning through social media allows politicians and their teams to garner the attention of the younger generations and convert that into an actual vote.

“It’s really hard to take lessons from a previous election and apply it in four years, because in four years the way that young voters will be using social media is already going to have changed.”

Ventimiglia also noted that gaining voters’ attention from social media is not something that will go away, but also expressed that it’s something that changes from election-to-election.