Dems have a TikTok problem |
The Democratic party's post-election reckoning will have to include the political and cultural power of TikTok.
"The world changed in the past four years," meaning between 2020 and 2024, Democratic data analyst David Shor says in a new presentation to clients. During that time frame TikTok more than quadrupled in popularity among young people, and "voters getting news from platforms like TikTok swung more to the GOP – especially those less engaged in politics," according to Shor's presentation.
Shor, of the influential firm Blue Rose Research, is sharing his findings publicly, including on Ezra Klein's NYT podcast and in an interview with Vox's Eric Levitz. Vox's subheadline asks, "TikTok is making young voters more Republican?"
Shor made the point to Klein that TikTok's takeover "is the biggest and probably fastest shift in media consumption that has happened in my lifetime, and it closely correlates with support change." He believes there is a "causal element at play."
Young men are becoming more conservative. And young people in general shifted toward Trump in last fall's election. So: Are phones and social media apps having an impact? Blue Rose's surveys indicate that people who relied on TikTok for news swung more toward Trump than those who relied on TV for news.
"And when you zoom in specifically on people who get their news from TikTok but don’t care very much about politics," Shor said, "this group is eight percentage points more Republican than they were four years ago — which is a lot."
Klein brought up the concern that ByteDance "could very easily have been turning dials, just softly," in ways that hindered Democrats. Or maybe, he said, TikTok is just a "vibes machine," amplifying what people are already feeling, and "the vibes were bad for Democrats in 2024."
Shor doesn't know. (Perhaps no one does.) "You could tell a story that maybe just anti-incumbent stuff is going to do really well on TikTok, and Democrats are going to do great now. I don't really know," he said. "But I think that, for whatever reason, this major shift really helped Republicans" in 2024.
In the interview with Levitz, Shor added this interesting POV: "We used to live in this world where in order to get your message out there, you had to get people who write really well to absorb your message and put it out. And now, we're in a world where anyone can make a video and if that video is appealing, it'll get out there. And this is naturally bad for the left, simply because the people who write really well are a lot more left-wing than the overall population."
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A 'great political divergence' |
On Klein's podcast, Shor said, "The story of this election is that people who follow the news closely, get their information from traditional media and see politics as an important part of their identity became more Democratic in absolute terms. Meanwhile, those who don't follow politics closely became much more Republican."
Klein's takeaway: "The question Democrats face, when you look at how badly they lost less politically engaged voters, is: How do you change the views of voters you don't really have a good way to reach?"
Shor agreed and described it as a "great political divergence between people who consume all the news sources that we know about and read about versus the people who don't." Here's the podcast and the transcript.
>> Now layer Trump's TikTok flip-flop on top of this – he wanted to ban the app, then came to recognize that it was politically savvy to be the app's champion...
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Radio Free Europe sues to save itself |
As we telegraphed yesterday, a legal battle is now underway over the future of the U.S. Agency for Global Media. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has filed suit in U.S. District Court to contest Trump's shutdown order, claiming it "would violate the Constitution and federal laws." I'm told at least one other lawsuit is also in the works.
>> Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty CEO Stephen Capus: "This is not the time to cede terrain to the propaganda and censorship of America’s adversaries. We believe the law is on our side and that the celebration of our demise by despots around the world is premature."
>> USAGM and senior adviser Kari Lake haven't commented on the suit yet. Lake has been appearing on right-wing TV and posting on X about shrinking the federal bureaucracy.
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Liam Scott, who was on the press freedom beat at Voice of America, describes his final months at VOA in this new piece for CJR.
"I was never told to report on anything in a way that was pro-Trump, and I'm not aware of any cases where that happened," Scott writes. But stories were watered down and others were skipped altogether. Scott believes it was part of "a broader effort by senior VOA officials to stay under the radar and avoid being targeted. Anticipatory obedience seemed to be the name of the game — and unsurprisingly, it failed." Read on...
>> Wash Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler found that none of the White House's anti-VOA claims add up.
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Hadas Gold writes: Sean Hannity “interviewed” Elon Musk last night, focusing mostly on the safe return of NASA astronauts in a joint SpaceX mission, and of course, how wonderful Musk is. I was hoping for some modicum of news, maybe a reaction to a judge halting the dismantling of USAID, but instead it was a soft, pillowy, and inviting conversation between friends.
>> Musk has been playing it safe by sitting down with adoring interviewers like Sen. Ted Cruz and Joe Rogan, and doesn't seem to have plans to stray from that anytime soon...
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Grok says Elon is X's disinfo kingpin |
Liam Reilly writes: It turns out Musk's own AI chatbot thinks he's the biggest spreader of disinformation on X. That's according to Grok, the AI chatbot built into the social media platform. When users ask Grok to name the biggest spreader of disinformation on the platform, Grok outs its own creator, which has led to some amusing reactions on X...
>> Speaking of Musk and X, he "invested $150 million to acquire more shares in X last year at a valuation approaching the price he paid for the company’s equity in 2022," per this new Bloomberg report.
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'Trump's chaos could spook the ad business' |
Longtime ad industry executive Brian Wieser "has lowered his spending forecast for 2025," Business Insider's Peter Kafka reports, from 4.5% growth for the US ad business to 3.6%. Wieser had expected a bumpy year, but now says "he underestimated how much uncertainty Trump 2.0 would bring..."
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A Republican majority on the FCC |
"Commissioner Geoffrey Starks will resign from the FCC this spring," Ars Technica's Jon Brodkin reports. "Starks' exit will give Chairman Brendan Carr a Republican majority, as the FCC has had two Democrats and two Republicans since the January resignation of former Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel."
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Political media notes and quotes |
>> "Trump has rarely missed opportunities to chat with reporters during the first eight weeks of his presidency," but after his call with Vladimir Putin yesterday, "Trump remained behind closed doors," Jonathan Lemire points out. Trump has no public events scheduled today, either. (The Atlantic)
>> "MAGA types found a new opportunity to lash out at the Associated Press on Tuesday after the news wire retracted a story that incorrectly said that Tulsi Gabbard described Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin as 'very good friends,'" Corbin Bolies writes. (Daily Beast)
>> The FTC has scrubbed hundreds of Biden-era blog posts from its website, including posts "critical of Amazon, Microsoft, and AI companies." (WIRED)
>> And Trump fired the two Democratic FTC commissioners yesterday. (CNN)
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>> "The bro-comedy podcasts that helped Trump win the election... have taken up a hot new topic: antisemitism and even, in one case, general Adolf Hitler apologia," Will Sommer writes in his first Bulwark piece. (The Bulwark)
>> Speaking of Sommer, his final piece for the Washington Post is about journalist Wesley Lowery, who "faced Title IX complaints before leaving American University." (Wash Post)
>> Daily Wire co-CEO Jeremy Boreing is stepping down to "focus on creative projects for the company," leaving Caleb Robinson as sole CEO. (Axios)
>> Jason Koebler says "FOIA is still sort of working" in the second Trump administration. (404 Media)
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NYT tries to fill some of the 538 void |
This week The New York Times launched a new project that aggregates public opinion surveys, starting with data about Trump's approval rating. "We're building on the work of the politics website 538, which for several years released this data as a public service until it was shuttered by ABC News this month," the NYT's William P. Davis says. "Our goal is to ensure that this resource, which is a foundational tool for many journalists and researchers, remains updated long-term."
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>> Correction: Yesterday we linked to a Reuters story about "Google expanding its partnership with Reddit." But Reuters has withdrawn the story because it "was based on outdated information." We shouldn't have linked to it in the first place.
>> Oracle "is weighing a proposal for a sale of TikTok's US operations that would have it provide security assurances and take a small stake in a new American entity while potentially leaving the app's influential algorithm in Chinese hands," Stephanie Lai and Brody Ford reports. (Bloomberg)
>> Some Republican lawmakers say that ☝️ would not be good enough. (Politico)
>> The Independent "is launching a news service using Google AI tools to provide summaries of its articles overseen by its journalists," Daniel Thomas reports. (FT)
>> "Arizona's highest court has created a pair of AI-generated avatars to deliver news of every ruling issued by the justices, marking what is believed to be the first example in the U.S. of a state court system tapping AI to build more human-like characters to connect with the public," Sejal Govindarao reports. (AP)
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Everyone is talking about 'Adolescence' |
...And Sandra Gonzalez's new story for CNN.com explains why. The new Netflix limited series about a horrible murder is "every parent's nightmare," she writes. The show has "taken the cultural conversation by storm – sitting at the top of the streamer's show rankings, with a reported 24.3 million views in its first four days, and spinning up new interest in its stellar, somewhat unknown cast." Read all about it here...
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Entertainment odds and ends |
>> Remaking "Snow White" was "always going to be controversial, but Disney's new live-action retelling of the 1937 film may just whistle its way to box office success," Alli Rosenbloom reports. This weekend it is "poised to earn anywhere between $48 to $58 million." (CNN)
>> "For the first time, paid streaming subscriptions hit the 100 million mark in the U.S. last year, while vinyl sales continued their nearly two-decade resurgence with $1.4 billion in sales," Jem Aswad reports. (Variety)
>> Note to my wife: We can finally catch this flick! "A Complete Unknown" will hit Hulu and Disney+ on March 27. (TheWrap)
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