Like Ms Kardashian, Donald Trump had built up an enormous following on social media, racking up 88.3m. And in many ways, his tweets define his presidency: incoherent (remember “covfefe”?), often confrontational, and loved and loathed in equal measure. But for all the criticism that his enthusiasm for Twitter was unbecoming of the leader of the free world, social media sits squarely at the heart of all modern political campaigning. In fact, a combined $200m was spent by candidates on Facebook advertising during the US presidential election, accelerating a trend that first captured attention after the EU referendum and the Cambridge Analytica saga. A combined $81m was spent by Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016 – far more than was estimated to have been spent by Russia to help Trump ‘steal’ that election.
Either way, the power of social media to influence people’s voting intentions is undoubted. Twitter went as far as banning political advertising in 2019, although its recent purge of Donald Trump and other right-leaning accounts suggests it isn’t shy about letting its own political leanings determine corporate policy. Likewise, both Amazon and Apple have taken steps to restrict certain political views – Twitter alternative Parler, for example, was taken offline as both tech giants refused to host its app.