Highlights from our first Verified event: Where Republicans are leading in creator strategy
Fresh midterms creator data
Will the FEC take action on creators post-midterms?
Photo by Lancer Photography/For The Washington Post
How creators are shaping the midterm elections
Last week we hosted Verified Live: Campaigns & Creators in Washington, D.C. to discuss how campaigns are using creators and where they have had a tangible impact on the upcoming midterm elections. As a former political campaign reporter, it’s a topic that I am fascinated by, as voters increasingly encounter political messaging on social media.
This space is rapidly developing. In 2024, I broke the news that both conventions were credentialing creators for the first time, and that now feels like ancient history. But since expanding my coverage this year beyond politics, I’ve also learned how far the political space lags behind much of the greater creator economy. For our first event, we convened speakers from both sides of the aisle to dig into how creators are shaping the political system, this cycle’s creator controversies, and where things are headed going into 2028. Speakers included creators and digital strategists Annie Wu Henry and Merrill Hersam, Federal Election Commissioner acting as Chair Shana M. Broussard, and creator and Reckoning Action founder Cheyenne Hunt.
You can watch all three discussions in full below:
The Takeover: How creators flexed their power this week.
Why Disney is doubling down on content creators (Los Angeles Times)
Disney inks major creator deal with Dude Perfect (Hollywood Reporter)
IShowSpeed partners with the Obamas for his first-ever film (Cincinnati Enquirer)
Axel Springer launches its own creator platform (release)
UTA expands creator leadership team (Hollywood Reporter)
Steven Bartlett breaks down his audience and interview strategy (Fortune)
The 'Silicon Valley and Wall Street big sisters' are leveling up their media brand (Business Insider)
“No influencers”: the hotels, restaurants and beauty spots restricting photoshoots (The Guardian)
The online campaign to unmask a Cornell rape accuser reached millions (Washington Post)
Project C is seeking nominations for its upcoming list of creator journalists (release)
The Critics Choice Association is seeking submissions for its inaugural Critics Choice Creator Awards (release)
The Group Chat: A special political version in honor of our event.
NEW MIDTERMS DATA: Creator marketing platform Fohr surveyed 259 U.S. based creators – mostly Instagram-first lifestyle micro-creators – about the midterms. Some of the findings that stood out to me:
59 percent of creator respondents said they would charge a premium for a candidate partnership as opposed to a standard brand deal, and 22 percent said they would charge a 50 percent premium or more.
37 percent said they are very confident about disclosure rules for paid political content, 42 percent said they are somewhat confident, and 22 percent said they are not at all.
52 percent of Democrats said they are more comfortable posting about politics than in 2024, 11 percent of Democrats said they are less comfortable. For Republicans, 30 percent said they are more comfortable and 45 percent said they are less comfortable.
91 percent of Democratic respondents said they would accept a paid political deal if offered compared to 65 percent of Republican respondents.
Fohr also found that most of the creators being hired by political campaigns are not traditional political creators, and that 44 percent of respondents have turned down or ended a brand deal over the brand’s politics or values.
CREATOR SMALL BUSINESS: The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) clarified that creator-led businesses “are classified under NAICS 5121 — Motion Picture and Video Industries — for purposes of SBA program eligibility.” SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler said the guidance “cuts through outdated classifications and gives qualifying creators greater clarity as they build businesses, create jobs, and compete and build for the future.”
PODCAST POLITICS: a new report from Sounds Profitable found 21 percent of likely Republican voters and 19 percent of likely Democratic voters say a podcast appearance could make them more likely to support a candidate.
OPPO PIPELINE: “We’re constantly packaging research for influencers to distribute on their platforms. … The zone is so flooded and so many newsrooms have been down-sized that a lot of reporters simply don’t have the capacity to cover every pitch. Adding influencers into our approach lets us quickly get research into the social feeds where people are increasingly getting their information and forming their political opinions. It’s also a great pipeline for traditional press,” American Bridge 21st Century president Pat Dennis told On Background.
MAPPING THE POLITICAL CREATOR INDUSTRY: The Center for Democracy & Technology and the Communication Technology Research Lab at the University of Pittsburgh released a new report outlining how regulations, power and financial incentives flow throughout the political creator space. It says, “Political influencers’ partnerships with political entities are regularly arranged through intermediary organizations, such as influencer marketing agencies. These agreements, and the payments that stem from them, are usually invisible to the general public, as well as to social media platforms’ content moderation teams” and raises the risk of “clandestine foreign funding of political propaganda.”
Creator Q+A: Cheyenne Hunt
Courtesy of Lancer Photography
Cheyenne Hunt is an attorney, activist, organizer, strategist and creator. She was one of the first Democratic Gen Z women to run for Congress and served as the executive director of Gen-Z for Change before founding Reckoning Action, an organization created “to confront misogyny and gender bias in American public life.”
She joined Verified Live: Campaigns & Creators on Oct. 15 in Washington, D.C., to discuss her work surfacing allegations against both former Rep. Eric Swalwell and Graham Platner, upending both the California gubernatorial race and the Maine Senate election. This interview has been edited and condensed. You can watch the full conversation here.
DW: Eric Swalwell was the frontrunner in many ways in that gubernatorial primary. He was a former presidential candidate and a party favorite, despite rumors for years of his misconduct. You were contacted by someone asking you to make a video about the congressman's behavior. Eleven days later, several articles were published, namely by CNN and the SF Chronicle, detailing allegations of sexual assault and rape. His campaign quickly unraveled, and he exited that race and later resigned from Congress. He has denied these claims.
I want to talk about how you brought those allegations to light and gathered new information. Why do you feel like creators were necessary in getting that story to really break through in the way it did?
Cheyenne Hunt: This story is interesting, and people want to take a lot of morals from it. And I really want everyone to pump the brakes on what this means about creators and the role that they should play. There was so much nuance that happened here. One thing that we really made sure to do was to avoid breaking any of the details ourselves, of what these survivors were bringing forward, because the trust crisis is real, and we knew that it would be received badly and actually put a lot of these women in danger if we were to start posting some of this stuff without having it go through a real newsroom that could vet these claims independently and do the kind of investigative journalism work that they are resourced to do, trained to do.
But I think that ultimately when I first posted my video about this, this was a unique thing. And I don't ever suggest to anyone else that they do this because it very nearly blew up my career. This was a unique confluence of events that came from my experience working on Capitol Hill, being warned on my second day to stay away from Eric Swalwell, and having that personal experience and then knowing the person who was coming forward, bringing these claims to me, and that by doing so, she herself was putting her career in danger.
The Platforms:
Spotify launched creator memberships, allowing creators to offer special access
Substack announced new ways for users to customize their feeds
TikTok and MADE BY US STUDIOS™ partner to co-produce slate of creator-led micro-series
Meta apologizes after suspending "No Kings" Instagram account
TikTok restores ‘Musk’ doc account “after an error” resulted in suspension
Bluesky expands its AI-powered app to build websites, games
A parting question: if you made it this far – what do you think? Should political creators self regulate their disclosure, should the FEC take action, or should the states step up? Hit reply to this email and send us your thoughts.
Got a creator story? Drop us a line by replying to this email, or follow me at @dylanewells. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to subscribe.
