Entertainment

From Beyoncé to brat summer, celeb endorsements and viral moments didn't matter much in this U.S. election

While buzzy social media moments, massive celebrity endorsements and viral memes were everywhere during the U.S. election campaign, those who study social media and pop culture say it's likely that smaller social media interactions had a larger impact on the outcome.

Smaller social media interactions can play a bigger role than celebrity support, critics suggest

Kamala Harris and singer Beyonce greet each other.
Singer Beyoncé and Democratic presidential nominee and U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris embrace at a rally in Houston on Oct. 25. Academics and culture critics are questioning the impact of celebrity endorsements in the recent election that saw Republican nominee Donald Trump defeat Harris. (Marco Bello/Reuters)

Following the U.S. election, Slate writer Scaachi Koul says some of the buzzier pop culture moments of the U.S. election campaign — like singer Charli XCX's post describing Kamala Harris as "brat" — didn't seem to impact the results. 

"Overwhelmingly, the cultural moments we thought mattered didn't," she said while speaking with CBC's Commotion. 

"I thought it was cute when Kamala and Charli XCX were doing this brat thing. Yeah, I can laugh about it, but it didn't matter."

But, Koul says it's likely too soon to tell whether endorsements from celebrities like Taylor Swift, Elon Musk, Joe Rogan and Beyoncé ultimately swung votes one way or the other.

"We don't know enough yet about why people voted the way they voted to be able to say anything about this yet."  

Speaking on the same episode, culture critic Pablo The Don said people are following what they perceive as being authentic.

"I think the random person who has consistent viral tweets on Twitter might have more power than Beyoncé in swinging elections at this point," they said.

LISTEN | What Trump's win says about pop culture's role in presidential races: 
Elamin is joined by Pablo The Don, Scaachi Koul and Radheyan Simonpillai to look back at the role social media culture and celebrity endorsements played in the U.S. election, and does it need to change..

Harder to sell voting on social media

Columbia University political science professor Donald Green told CBC News it's unlikely that social media was terribly effective in getting out the vote. 

"I should differentiate between social media blasts by influencers on the one hand and friend-to-friend communication by people who are in the same social network," Green said.

"The latter tends to work and the former is ambiguous, but probably does not, and social media advertising almost certainly does not work," he said, noting that it's easier for celebrities to sell you something than it is for them to get you to vote.

"It's a thing that you can sort of do right then and there, whereas voting tends to roll out slowly over time." 

WATCH | Can celebrity endorsements get people to vote? 

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Thousands of Americans registered to vote after Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris for president, but will that make a difference in November? The National asked political expert Stephen Maynard Caliendo if celebrity endorsements really could tip the needle in this very close election race.

Green also noted that the typical social media audience is younger, "and that's an audience that, if it turned out in greater numbers, would have put Harris over the top."

An exit poll from Edison Research cited by Reuters had Harris winning the support of 55 per cent of voters aged 18-29, compared to 42 per cent for Donald Trump.

Green says there was an initial three to four week honeymoon period for Harris, but after that, support for both candidates seemed to remain static.

"They had almost exactly the same polling numbers from the debate on." 

He says it seems to him as though the election outcome "is due to widespread dissatisfaction with the state of the economy, rightly or wrongly, and a kind of sense that the country's on the wrong track."

WATCH | Harris campaigned with Beyoncé, Trump sat down with Joe Rogan: 

Harris campaigns with Beyoncé, Trump sits down with Rogan as election day approaches

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The U.S. election is less than two weeks away, and the presidential candidates have turned to some American media celebrities to promote their platforms. In Texas, Vice-President Kamala Harris was joined on stage by singer Beyoncé, while former president Donald Trump taped an appearance on UFC colour commentator Joe Rogan’s podcast.

Influencing the algorithm

Wael Jabr, assistant professor in the Supply Chain and Information Systems department at Pennsylvania State University, says people are more likely to be influenced by a message the more they hear it, and that means campaigns value social media influencers. 

"We rarely click on ads … So they realize that this is not how you influence your feed," he said. "You pay influencers not a lot of money and you have a stronger impact than ads."

One of the biggest influencers of all, Elon Musk, is a Trump supporter who owns the social media platform X. Jabr says he thinks Musk's posts on X were influential. 

"I think what's useful is, he tweets a lot, and he has a large follower base," he said. "So now you're creating a lot of volume in the platform and therefore influencing this algorithm."

A man in a black ball cap and dark clothing jumps into the air so his t-shirt rides up and shows his stomach as an older blond man to his left stands at a microphone and looks over his shoulder at the scene.
Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk reacts next to Trump during an Oct. 5, rally in Butler, Pa., the site of a previous Trump assassination attempt. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)

A changing information ecosystem

Meanwhile, Green says if there's anything that can be taken away from this election concerning social media, it has to do with how the information ecosystem has changed over the decades.

"One of the more remarkable things about this election is that though saddled with a string of scandals, Trump didn't really suffer a setback," he said. "His stalwart supporters came out for him and they never really wavered."

Green believes that has to do with the way social media shows people content that they've already engaged with in some way. 

"The network of support systems that would keep people sustained in their commitment to Trump exists now in a way that wouldn't have been true 40 to 50 years ago."