a collection of my essays, from 2022 to 2024
Swipe to Divide: How This Year's Political Campaigns Have Changed History
essay information
entered into 2025 scholastic awards
˗ˏˋ★‿︵‧ ˚ ₊⊹From edits of Kamala Harris dancing to Chali XCX’s “360” to Donald Trump’s showdown with infamous social media influencer and boxer Logan Paul, it’s safe to say that this year’s election campaigns have been unconventional. When I first saw these videos while doom-scrolling on my for-you page over the summer, I dismissed them as fanmade videos, caught up in the political whirlwind of the election cycle. Perhaps it was the username, or maybe even the checkmark beside it, that made me double-take. Did the official Donald Trump account really just post an edit to the latest hit country song?
Clearly, how candidates utilize social media can make or break their public images—and their campaigns. Gone are the days of door-to-door canvassing and cold calling. The dawn of the digital age has ushered in a new form of marketing that ventures into an endless array of fast-paced platforms where microtrends come and go as fast as user attention spans.
Trump, who holds one of the most followed accounts on Twitter, just under Taylor Swift, leverages his social media presence in a highly unconventional way. With professional posts few and far between, he has become notorious for his aggressive ALL-CAPITALIZED-RUN-ON-SENTENCE-RANTS that range a variety of topics. Trump’s approach to social media seems to follow the mantra “all press is good press,” posting increasingly polarizing and sometimes even contradictory statements, such as his on-and-off relationship with masking up during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite his bombastic persona online, his ideological transparency, regardless of the “correctness” of all forms, has made him a fixture on social media. This unprecedented level of fame (or infamy) on social media propelled his successes, with obvious results in 2016, and even more this year.
Harris, on the other hand, took cues from Trump’s strategy, but changed the formula. Trump’s approach worked because he entered the presidential race with an established controversial political personality and an energized fanbase. Harris, however, lacked the controversial history that would allow her to openly criticize and mudsling her opponent and faced the double standards enforced by a heavily patriarchal society. Thus, rather than use a single account as her online soapbox, Harris divided her campaign’s content between two accounts: the official polished Kamala Harris account and KamalaHQ, which masqueraded as a fan account and acted, in the words of CNN, as her campaign’s experimental “attack dog.” This calculated move of separating her accounts allowed her to target younger, trend-focused audiences through catchy short-form content on one channel while maintaining a veneer of professionalism on another. Only then could Harris meet Trump on his turf without compromising the dignity of her official account.
Interestingly, Trump took a page out of Harris’ playbook in turn. Following the creation of separate posts across accounts from Harris, his accounts began to vary the content they posted by platform, with target audiences in mind. YouTube video podcast appearances and Shorts appealed to younger audiences while Facebook and Instagram posts targeted the more traditional demographic with infographics and the AI-generated drivel that older folks tripped over themselves for. Contrary to Harris’ consistent TikTok posts, Trump’s official appearances on TikTok were surprisingly absent, even more so when compared to his increasing appearances on the alt-right rabbit hole of YouTube, notorious for constantly pushing right-wing politics onto its viewers through its recommendation feed. The resulting audiences that he reached by targeting pre-established fanbases of known conservative influencers were far more likely to support him, and he knowingly took advantage of that fact.
Both campaigns, in their own ways, revealed how polarizing a tool social media has become within the realm of politics, even further than the “echo chamber,” a phrase that has been thrown around so much in recent years it has begun to lose its meaning. Rather than broad outreach, candidates are increasingly targeting pre-existing supporters with content designed to rile them up and increase engagement. Political consensus has been replaced by segmented, algorithm-driven posts tailored to the mob mentality of social media circles, creating a battleground of ignorance and partisan statements both inter and intra group, and leaving little room for nuanced discussion or genuine debate. Instead, each side becomes more entrenched, convinced of their righteousness by a constant stream of like-minded content, fueled by the deliberate manipulation of the political campaigns themselves.
This is dangerous—it’s been clear since the onset of the online and political worlds combining that the users would cause polarization, but the blatant acknowledgment and utilization of the flawed social media algorithm by the system itself has almost never been seen before, at least, not since before Trump’s 2016 election win.
The effectiveness of these strategies has become increasingly clear, particularly following Trump’s win over Harris this year: the targeted approaches do, in fact, work. It’s not a conspiracy, and it’s definitely no coincidence. Young white men, the audience that Trump had been targeting specifically with his tailored posts and appearances on social media, showed up more than ever before, playing a large role in handing the election to Trump. While this could be seen as a success (An increase in the turnout of young people!), this digital strategy has a clear downside: as official campaigns lean more deliberately into divisive social media tactics, polarization within this country will only grow more rapidly. Even more concerning, this kind of engagement is likely here to stay, especially now that Trump has won. Social media campaigns that engage followers with partisan content and feed on outrage will continue to dominate political discourse online because of how effective they are.
As political campaigns dive deeper into these tactics, the future of social media in politics becomes increasingly bleak. Once hailed as a tool for easy access to engagement and discussion, will social media be the catalyst to a political battleground of polarization and performative outrage?
