People sit next to a wall of content creators on the third day of the Democratic National Convention at the United Center in Chicago in August.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
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Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
Merrick Hanna is, by any measure, a TikTok star.
The 19-year-old has over 32 million subscribers on the platform and around 20 million on YouTube and Instagram. He is known for his dance videos, usually accompanied by viral audio clips and pop songs.
Attending the Democratic National Convention was clearly not his usual style. And he wasn’t sure it was a good idea.
“I’ve never made a video where it’s even remotely political,” he told NPR a week after the DNC ended. “It wasn’t until I mentioned the opportunity to my grandmother that she told me she had gone to the DNC in 1960 as a volunteer and thought it was an incredible experience and that I should go too.”
Merrick Hanna, 19, best known for appearing on “America’s Got Talent” at age 11, will be voting for the first time this year. He is one of the 41 million Gen Zers who recently became eligible to vote in the presidential race. “I believe politics is important. It affects all of us,” he said. “That’s what I wanted to share with my followers, just to get people to vote, really.”
Kevin Yac and Shawn Hanna
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Kevin Yac and Shawn Hanna
Hanna was one of more than 200 content creators accredited to the Democratic convention, nearly three times as many as at the Republican convention in July.
The move is part of a broader Democratic Party effort to reach Americans who don’t consume traditional political news, including many young voters, who use disproportionately TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat at higher rates compared to older generations.
The Democratic Party is counting on the support of voters under 30 this fall, and despite an increase in turnout in recent election cycles, this is a growing generation whose electoral power is largely untapped.
This goal gives potential value to working with digital creators, who may have a more direct connection to new voters. However, while some influencers who attended the DNC regularly post about current events, elections, and voting, and likely have a political following, others, like Hanna, do not.
Instead, Hanna’s goal, he said, was to make entertaining videos devoid of personal political views.
“It turned out to be a bit of a challenge,” he admitted.
His videos have garnered anywhere from a few hundred thousand to a million views, a number the teen creator called average. But he has also been criticized online for attending the event.
Reflecting on the experience, he said that while he enjoyed the convention, he found it “tricky” and “slightly stressful” to work out how to carry out his working style.
“The DNC is a one-time event for me. I don’t want to be a political creator,” he said. “This time, it was an incredible experience. I loved it. But I’m not sure I want to go again.”
Democrats increase their influence
The Democrats have worked with influencers In the past, including during Biden’s 2020 campaign and White House tenure, digital creators generated more than 350 million views during the convention in Chicago, according to the DNC.
Hanna wasn’t the only creator who had to balance engaging his audience with his political appetites. It’s a problem many creators have had to grapple with, Nadya Okamoto tells NPR.
“It didn’t surprise my followers,” the lifestyle creator said, referring to her decision to attend the DNC.
In addition to her vlog-style posts, the 26-year-old influencer and entrepreneur is known for her work to de-stigmatize periods and runs the menstrual product company August. She calls herself a progressive and has said she has already lost thousands of subscribers because of her support for access to abortion.
Nadya Okamoto, 26, used to work in politics. In 2017, while she was a student at Harvard University, she ran unsuccessfully for city council in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She told NPR that she no longer considers herself a political influencer. But the work has stuck with her as she runs her business. “All of this work kind of continues to reaffirm my passion for creating content,” she said. “We live in an attention economy.”
Nadya Okamoto
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Nadya Okamoto
Coming into the DNC, she admitted to feeling some nervousness about how getting politically involved might affect her job — but that didn’t change her decision to attend.
“I’m in a little bit of an uncomfortable space because I’m a very forward-thinking co-founder of a venture-backed company that has national retail partners. But I’m also a person. I’m also an American voter,” she said. “But I think that’s the nature of politics, right? Whether it’s me posting to 5 million followers or in a family conversation of five people, you’re going to get that kind of backlash. And I think that’s why these conversations are so important.”
While in Chicago for the convention, Okamoto posted to TikTok nearly two dozen times, speaking out about her support for Harris and sharing several interviews with public figures, including Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
But Okamoto stuck to his usual style: giving short, frank updates on his experience at the convention.
“I’m not surprised that the videos that were the most successful weren’t primarily about politics,” she said, pointing to a post with her sisters that had the greatest commitment with nearly 850,000 views.
“It’s a challenge because, obviously, you’re dealing with an audience that cares about values and issues, which to them is not inherently political – and in fact has been the opposite of politics,” she said.
Tori Dunlap has been in a similar situation. She runs the platform Her First 100K, which helps women learn how to invest and save their money, and has more than 4.5 million followers on social media.
“We saw a drop in our followers when I started posting that we were attending and covering the DNC, which honestly shocked me,” Dunlap said, telling NPR that she lost about 10,000 followers on Instagram, where she has about 2.1 million in total.
Tori Dunlap, 30, is a financial expert and influencer. She told NPR she knows firsthand how difficult it can be to work in the digital space. “As a woman on the internet, you can’t do anything without someone coming after you,” she said. “Literally two weeks before (the DNC), I posted a picture of myself in a bathing suit, and we lost 40,000 followers because of that.”
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Presley Ann/Getty Images for SoFi/Getty Images North America
“It seemed very, very obvious to me what my political views were or what their orientations might be,” she added, noting that her podcast and book are titled Financial feminist.
But Dunlap, who just turned 30, said the criticism didn’t bother her. On the contrary, she was extremely moved to attend the convention.
“The posts have been as successful as our regular content, if not better,” she said. “The pictures of me absolutely ecstatic and losing my mind… We continue to see a lot of love on those posts.”
But amid the love, some of her followers expressed disappointment in Dunlap’s decision to attend, so she responded.
“I’m so tired of everyone fighting in the comments. Just because you vote for a candidate or party doesn’t mean you like everything about them or their policies,” she wrote in the comments. “I was honored to represent my platform and advocate for all of you.”
Dunlap told NPR she went to the DNC to encourage her supporters to participate and feel like they had a voice.
Additionally, while her brand is focused on money, its political roots run deep. Dunlap said her opposition to former President Donald Trump’s 2016 victory motivated her to help women better understand their finances. For those reasons, she said she doesn’t see her declining follower count as a loss.
“This is not an airport. You don’t have to announce your departure,” she said. “If you don’t want to talk about politics, that’s a huge privilege. And secondly, that’s okay. You can just leave and you can find content elsewhere.”
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