Online influencers aren’t in the business of promoting just products anymore. New research finds that micro-influencers are increasingly used to spread political messages and disinformation, without disclosing who paid for it.

The 2020 election has been a busy time for Samuel Woolley, an assistant professor of journalism and project director for propaganda research at the Center for Media Engagement (CME) at the University of Texas at Austin. Woolley is a researcher who focuses on propaganda, emerging media, and the ways in which political groups leverage digital tools to attempt to manipulate public opinion. After spending months tracking down fake news and disinformation campaigns, he is worried that “we have outdated ways of understanding propaganda and disinformation.”

“The thing that concerns me the most about our current battle against disinformation is that we’re much too concerned on the machinations of nation states like China and Russia and not concerned enough about, say, right-wing extremism, or white nationalism, or the individual use of social media platforms for the spreading of defamation, harassment, and hateful speech against protected groups,” he said.

In a recent paper, Woolley and his co-authors explored the role that paid micro-influencers—those with 25,000 followers or fewer—play in spreading disinformation and political messages. Both Democrats and Republicans have worked with influencers during the 2020 campaigns, and politically-aligned influencers have moved in together into so-called hype houses, like Conservative Hype House and Republican Hype House, to collaborate on content for their hundreds of thousands of followers. When former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched his ill-fated campaign for president, his campaign offered influencers $150 to post about why they’d vote for him. Unlike some other posts, influencers working with Bloomberg’s campaign disclosed that posts were paid for by adding disclaimer like “#sponsored by @mikebloomberg” to their captions. Undisclosed posts in support of candidates and certain issues could help manufacture popularity, similar to the way that label-funded payments to radio DJs in the payola scandal helped certain “hit” songs climb the charts.

https://www.promarket.org/2021/01/13/propaganda-influencers-paid-spread-political-disinformation/