All The Presidents’ Social Platforms
Though it feels low-brow to mainstream media, US presidents need their digital influencers to connect to online audiences
“God I hate this world,” Saturday Night Live’s Kate McKinnon’s Jen Psaki says in response to a TikToker explaining they earned $13 million last year. SNL’s March 12 cold open sketch imagined the meeting between the Biden administration and 30 top TikTok stars that occurred on March 11. SNL used the opportunity to poke fun at the meeting using low stakes cynicism of online personalities, but since the beginning of social media influencers, each president has employed their own digital teams to control messages in online spaces.
The Biden administration organized a meeting with the top TikTok stars to ask for their assistance to connect with young audiences to better explain the ongoing situation in Ukraine. (Biden himself wasn’t in attendance.) Since the war in Ukraine escalated, many people have turned to social media for immediate coverage and continual feeds of the ongoing war.
Taylor Lorenz writes, “TikTok stars, many with millions of followers, have increasingly sought to make sense of the crisis for their audiences.” With these important messengers out there, meeting with influencers gives the administration the opportunity to…
