"A new report, shared exclusively with WIRED and published today by researchers from Columbia and Harvard, is a first-of-its-kind study designed to measure the impact influencers and online creators can have on their audiences.
The study was conducted with 4,716 Americans aged between 18 and 45, most of whom were randomly assigned a list of progressive content creators to follow. Over the course of five months, from August to December 2024, these creators produced nonpartisan content designed to educate followers rather than explicitly advocate for a specific political viewpoint.
The results showed that exposure to these progressive-minded creators not only increased general political knowledge, but also shifted followers’ policy and partisan views to the left.
In contrast, a placebo group that was not assigned any creators to follow but was allowed to scroll social media as normal “showed significant rightward movement,” which researchers said was related to the right-leaning nature of social media networks.
For the study’s authors, and experts who have reviewed the research, the findings confirm that not only are influencers now potentially more powerful than traditional media, but content creators who rarely share political content may be the most powerful of all."
https://www.wired.com/story/the-most-powerful-politics-influencers-barely-post-about-politics/
