White House to employ an 'influencer army' ahead of 2024 election: report

An "army" of social media influencers may soon get their own briefing room at the White House in an attempt to boost Joe Biden's standing among young voters. According to a report from Axios, the Biden administration will have four digital staffers focused on influencers and content creators.

This is part of an ongoing strategy by democrats to target voters between the age of 18-29 and White House deputy chief of staff Jen O'Malley Dillon said, "We're trying to reach young people, but also moms who use different platforms to get information and climate activists and people whose main way of getting information is digital." 

The report notes that there are already hundreds of influencers that have been working with the White House, and the administration sees young voters as the key to Democrats' election success. In the 2022 midterms, Democrats outperformed Republicans by 28 points with young voters. 

The White Host hosted over a dozen influencers for a State of Union watch party in February. One of the attendees of the event said several influencers asked, "when are we going to get press briefing passes?" And that the administration was "actually very responsive to it."

This is not the first time the administration has flirted with the idea of moving away from traditional media. In March of 2021, they hosted a group of close to 30 TikTok stars and give them a brief on Ukraine. At the time, the White House director of digital strategy, Rob Flaherty, said they wanted to make sure the influencers had information from "an authoritative source."

In that meeting, one of the attendees asked, "What efforts or strategies are currently in place to either reduce or prevent the misinformation that we receive in the United States by outside sources, essentially, regarding the conflict between Ukraine and Russia?"

Then-press secretary Jen Psaki responded, "we're talking to all of you, and I think that this, part of that as we started off this conversation conveying is we recognize how important your platforms are and how important it is to provide as much accurate information as possible to people who are using their voices and their platforms to project accurate information. Because the best antidote to disinformation is the truth"

During the midterm elections the administration turned to other TikTok stars like Dylan Mulveny, who was asked to sit down and ask the President questions around trans issues. Mulveny noted that the "President has watched Days of Girlhood - it’s kind of epic."

According to Axios, the White House said this would give the creators more consistent access to the president, leading to the administration leaning more into alternative media as he gets ready to officially announce his bid for re-election.