Mapping the Political Influencer Industry and the Problems it Causes for Democracy
Isabel Linzer, Zoe Tzanis, Samuel Woolley / Oct 30, 2026
A group of social media creators posted oddly similar messages in support of a United States Senate hopeful in Kentucky. California’s Fair Political Practices Commission investigated undisclosed posts by influencers paid by billionaire Tom Steyer’s campaign for governor, but closed the case without fines.Street interviews of voters in Michigan are being posted for a fee by bot accounts based in India.
This election cycle, political influencers are everywhere — and their activities are increasingly under the microscope.
In many cases, creator-generated political content seems to be the picture-perfect version of democratic communication in the social media age: creators engage people in the democratic process and elevate voices that are traditionally excluded from politics.
But what may appear to voters as authentic grassroots content is, in fact, driven by a complex, opaque multimillion industry that today’s political influencers operate within, which is shaped by major financial considerations and other incentives. This industry is different from models of campaign surrogacy, advertising, or activism that we’ve seen before, which means that political influencers pose new problems. Ensuring that the rapidly maturing industry plays a conducive rather than corrosive role in democracy will require the involvement of regulators, platforms, voters, and creators themselves.
The “Political Influencer Industry Map” shows the relationship(s) between political actors, government actors, content creators or influencers, intermediaries, platforms, and audiences, broken down via financial incentives; power, access, and influence; and rules and regulations. Source: Center for Democracy & Technology
Over the last several years, and with increased fervor this campaign season, new organizations that specialize in cultivating, gathering, and deploying political influencers have sprung into being. They work for a range of clients — from super PACs to political parties to businesses. Meanwhile, marketing firms, talent agencies, and extant partnership platforms also facilitate political groups’ relationship with creators. Groups of influencers can be hired to make a topic seem popular online, in a tactic that looks very similar to what social media platforms typically ban as part of their work to shut down foreign influence operations and coordinated inauthentic behavior. Many influencers are paid by campaigns, candidates, and others to post, and not all disclose those payments.
Influencers, and the ambiguity about whether their posts are sponsored, are rightly highly appealing for political campaigns and strategists. The majority of Americans — particularly young people — get at least some news from content creators on social media. Audiences perceive creators as persuasive, trusted messengers. They appear as more authentic and in touch with their audiences than traditional news sources. This relationship is crucial, especially as trust in media and elected leaders nears an all-time low.
This online political activity creates a three-fold problem. First, most of the rules we’ve come to expect around political content, like a disclaimer about who paid for an ad, either don’t apply or fail to consistently apply. The lack of such disclosure requirements leaves the door wide open to nefarious, disinformative, and even illegal activity.
On the government side, the Federal Trade Commission’s guidance for influencers to be clear about commercial partnerships — like adding #ad when promoting a toothpaste brand — doesn’t apply to political partnerships. The Federal Election Commission’s typical advertising disclaimers also usually don’t apply to political influencer content. This makes political campaigning in the US more opaque, allows hidden groups to have more power during elections, and creates the possibility for novel forms of computational propaganda.
Political creator content can also be at odds with social media platform policies. For instance, campaigns have hired creators to post on TikTok — despite TikTok’s rule that says no compensated political content is allowed on the platform. That puts creators in the difficult position of considering a job that may put their account at risk. Even when creators are aware of platforms’ limits — and not all are — they can easily get around the rules simply by not disclosing the partnership. At the same time, platforms’ monetization programs, which directly pay creators for their content, further blur the incentives in the creator-platform relationship.
The second problem is that the good parts of political content creation can easily be tainted by the bad. Compensation and genuine belief can and often do coexist, but accusations of payment aimed at organic influencer content now regularly get thrown around in the comments. Not all creators are beating the accusation, like when Kremlin-linked money was successfully passed through a US-based content creation firm to pay for American political influencer content. Despite this, increased scrutiny by social media platforms could lead to innocuous and non-coordinated posts being erroneously taken down. It can also generate scandals. Both can cause serious reputational damage for creators and, in some cases, legal repercussions.
Third, using political influencers for political campaign advertising is unpopular and risks further undermining public trust in candidates, parties, and democratic institutions generally. A July survey by the Rainey Center asked if “campaigns should be allowed to pay influencers and creators to promote candidates, as long as the payments are disclosed.” 48% of respondents said no. Three-quarters of respondents were concerned about a creator being paid by a campaign, PAC, or social media platform while posting about politics. The majority also ranked “secretly paid political influencers” as equally concerning in the 2026 midterms as AI-generated political content and foreign influence online.
US voters are wary of paid political influencers
These numbers may shift to be more favorable of political influencer activity as people gain more exposure and get used to such content, but could foreshadow a serious problem for Americans’ trust in news, politics, and digital information more generally. If, in the absence of disclosure, the baseline assumption is that any creator’s political opinion might be sponsored, that is good for media consumers’ insulation against clandestine propaganda, but undermines trust in yet another part of the media ecosystem and ruins the good parts of what political influencers bring to democracy.
Disclosing compensation is one way forward. Texas and California have both introduced requirements in the past few years that require creators to include disclaimers on certain kinds of paid political posts. Even as those requirements are being tested by campaigns this election cycle, and hopes of federal legislative progress are slim, players in the creator industry can help make transparent, pro-democracy practices the norm. Creators can be clear about the relationships with partners, and campaigns and other political groups can support them in doing so. Platforms can evaluate where their policies and enforcement fall short. And most importantly, voters can double-check their sources in these final days before the midterms.
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