Corporations are using Influencers to Manipulate your Politics

Is Congress trying to take away your credit card points?

As corporations and politicians find more and more ways to manipulate the attention economy and us, independent journalism and analysis is more important than ever. Emily in Your Phone is fully funded by paid supporters. If you aren’t already a paid subscriber please consider supporting this work.

One of the things I want to focus my reporting on in the coming year is the various ways that we are all being manipulated by influencers, corporations and social media platforms to transform how we view politics and government.

I thought about this a lot during the holidays when the New York Times published their expose on Blake Lively’s lawsuit against Justin Baldoni, my TikTok was full of people realizing they had been manipulated.

Phones bring information to us in such an intimate manner, in our bedrooms, our bathrooms and from people who we have parasocial relationships with, influencers we have never met but whom we feel are our close friends. These manipulations happen without our even realizing it, and are often fraught with emotions. After an election when one of our main takeaways is the power of influencers, we should all expect this type of thing to become ever more common and more difficult to untangle.

We’ve had lots of conversations over the years about how foreign powers are using the Internet to influence American politics, but they aren’t the only ones who have caught on to this incredibly effective method - we are being manipulated in a variety of ways every single day on social media.

And some of that political manipulation is being done by corporations and it is happening right in front of our noses.

You have probably been subjected to a coordinated political influence campaign and had no idea.

For example, a bunch of very well-liked personal finance influencers have gotten wrapped up in a campaign to influence how you think about a credit card bill in Congress.

Let me break it down for you.