Dr. Michael Higgins
Research co-lead for Culture, Communication and Creative Practice in University of Strathclyde’s Department of Humanities. He has published extensively on first Sarah Palin and then Donald Trump’s impact on political culture and was founding editor of Palgrave Communication’s “Mediated populism” section.
Email: Michael.higgins@strath.ac.uk
Prof. Angela Smith
Professor of Language and Culture at University of Sunderland and specialist in English Language, mainly sociolinguistics and politeness theory. Her most recent published research is in the areas of gender, and political communication. She is founder and co-editor of the Bloomsbury Library of Gender in Popular Culture.
Email: angela.smith@sunderland.ac.uk
U.S. Election 2024
78. Momentum is a meme (Prof Ryan M. Milner)
79. Partisan memes and how they were perceived in the 2024 U.S. presidential election (Dr Prateekshit “Kanu” Pandey, Dr Daniel Lane)
80. The intersection of misogyny, race, and political memes... America has a long way to go, baby! (Dr Gabriel B. Tait)
81. Needs Musk: Trump turns to the manosphere (Dr Michael Higgins, Prof Angela Smith)
82. “Wooing the manosphere: He’s just a bro.” Donald Trump’s digital transactions with "dude" influencers (Prof Mark Wheeler)
83. Star supporters (Prof John Street)
84. Pet sounds: Celebrity, meme culture and political messaging in the music of election 2024 (Dr Adam Behr)
85. The stars came out for the 2024 election. Did it make a difference? (Mark Turner)
86. Podcasting as presidential campaign outreach (Ava Kalinauskas, Dr Rodney Taveira)
87. Value of TV debates reduced during Trump era (Prof Richard Thomas, Dr Matthew Wall)
88. America’s “fun aunt”: How gendered stereotypes can shape perceptions of women candidates (Dr Caroline Leicht)
In order to burnish his outsiderly credentials, Donald Trump has been obliged to continually reassert his political eccentricity and amplify the outrage. In acting the renegade, this election saw an explicit and focused strategy from the Republican candidate and his team to cultivate the support of male influencers. The months leading up to election day saw the president-elect cast aside political convention to grant interviews with podcasters Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman, Logan Paul and Adin Ross, Ross having recently interviewed Andrew Tate (currently awaiting trial for the trafficking of women) and Nick Fuentes (advocate of white supremacy and misogyny). This fellowship and their chosen vibe has been characterised as toxic masculine posturing, which matches well with Trump’s populist idiolect. This strategy has yielded electoral rewards, with Trump enjoying increasing support amongst male voters across racial and social demographics. These advances may have been aided by the late (though hardly unexpected) endorsement of podcaster Rogan, prompting Trump onto TikTok to laud Rogan as “a fantastic guy”.
Since Barack Obama’s election team realised the power of social media in 2008, politicians have used it to lend their campaigns a personal and seemingly spontaneous touch. Campaign strategy has drawn increasingly on the established followings of celebrities and influencers in maximising social media impact. In the Democrat camp, celebrity supporters promoted issues of equality and inclusivity, and Kamala Harris’s pledge to reinstate female reproductive rights.
Which social media platforms come to and from dominance is in a continued state of flux. However, while in decline elsewhere, X (formerly Twitter) occupied a key role in Trump’s election through the personality and allegiance of owner and Trump acolyte Elon Musk. Prior to Musk’s acquisition, Trump had been removed from the platform accused of incitement to violence, prompting Trump to set up his own “open tent” platform Truth Social. Musk bought Twitter in 2023, changing its name to X while overseeing a return and amplification of the platform’s tolerance for personal abuse, controversy and conspiracy theories. Musk himself used his platform to foreground his own anti-trans and anti-birth control opinions. While large numbers of users and advertisers left the platform, this style of management laid the ground for Trump’s triumphant return to the platform in August 2024.
Musk and Trump present similar forms of hypermasculinity, articulating gendered performance with material success and an aggressive intolerance of “wokeness” and dissenting views in general. Musk sweetens this with references to popular culture. Matrix imagery is associated with the Republican conceit of anti-establishment thinking in the urge to “swallow the red pill”. Musk also styles himself “dark MAGA”, wearing a Trump MAGA cap in black and deftly combining Trump’s branding with the aesthetic affectation of a comic book hero.
Using X, Musk produced his own pro-Trump echo chamber. Whether following Musk or not, users would see his repostings of other influencers’ perspectives on Trump, with either an approving bullseye emoji if positive, or a strongly disapproving comment if negative. Profiles selected for approval included Autism Capital, which claims to be a citizen journalist account aligned with tech and right-wing politics (including memes promoting hypermasculinity). Such was his enthusiasm, Musk breached even the limited standards that survived his X cull and reposted conspiratorial material that carried fact-check warnings from his own company. Musk’s reposts drew upon a limited pool of blue-tick (paid for and verified) accounts, including some associated with his America political funding group, and several that carried the acronym DOGE (“Department of Government Efficiency”), citing a governmental role promised to Musk in the event of a Republican victory.
In addition, with an eye on balance perhaps, Musk reposted testimonies from various blue-ticked accounts that claimed to be former Democrats turning their vote to Trump for the first time. Accounts identifying as from women and that accorded with Musk and Trump’s views on gender rights were also featured. These included female ex-army mothers such as Insurrection Barbie and, in the days immediately before the election day itself, supportive contributions from his mother, Maye Musk’s, account. As well as giving support to the Republican line on women’s rights, this increase in repostings from female-identified X users coincided with the Democrats’ pro-women policy push.
It is easy to see the attraction of Trump for those aspiring to stand out in the manosphere. Trump’s selling points are his supposed straightforwardness and the enticing prospect of an incendiary remark. Trump offers eyeballs and the allure of power. Trump can also deliver material advantages to the likes of Musk, both protecting the X platform from legislation and offering presidential consent to Musk’s wider business interests. As this presidency seem likely to show, influencers gonna influence.