Race, gender, and the appeal to youth in the Harris campaign

What has struck you the most about the differences in communication from the Biden campaign to the Harris campaign?

I think one of the most noticeable shifts is the savvy around social media and particularly the savvy around youth culture, thinking about the use of memes, the use of music clips, the use of dance, the use of slang, and even things that are not even necessarily Gen Z, like hashtags and emojis. There has been a clear shift into using more of that kind of internet culture.

The last few polls I've seen show that she's doing a lot better with young voters. They seem to really have embraced the idea that rather than doing what the Biden team was doing, which was mostly posting drier, more information-heavy news clips or clips from politicians or political operatives online, they're really leaning into the popular culture.

From using Charli XCX's 'Brat' colors in the campaign to using the Chappell Roan dance trends, it shows that there's investment in getting the attention of younger voters. I think that what we've seen as a result is a new excitement and a new sense of being seen among young voters and ideally that sense of being seen translates into wanting to be involved politically.

You led the research on a 2020 book on Twitter. What's the role of TikTok in this election compared to 2020?

It's very clear that TikTok is benefitting the Harris campaign, and I think part of that is because of the way her campaign has embraced meme-ification. She might end up being our first meme president. What I mean by that is that her campaign communications seem to have really leaned into the immediacy of the trend and following the trends.

I think the role of X has significantly diminished, and that's primarily because of Elon Musk ownership and positions there. A lot of people have fled Twitter and gone to other platforms like Bluesky, which is what I use now, or Mastodon. But at the same time, many journalists are still on Twitter, many celebrities are still on Twitter. One interesting thing we see across social media platforms is the sharing of TikToks on other platforms; they are all over Instagram, for example.

What similarities and differences do you see in how the campaign communicates about Harris' gender compared to the 2016 Clinton campaign and about Harris' multiracial identity compared to the Obama campaigns?

I think what we saw with Hillary Clinton in 2016 is that the Clinton campaign was depending on a more old-school understanding that for a woman candidate to be taken seriously she had to perform all the supposed seriousness and authority stereotypically expected of a male candidate. You didn't really see the Clinton campaign playing up things about Clinton's identity like that she was a mother or she likes cooking or things like that because those are the sort of things that historically would've been used to undermine female candidates.

What I thought was really interesting at the Democratic National Convention is that you saw that the stories being told about Kamala Harris were really allowing her a more nuanced and broader type of identity as a woman. You heard her husband talk about how she makes a mean brisket, and you've heard her nieces and her stepchildren talk about what a good mother figure and role model she is, and at the same time you also heard her talking about U.S. military might and about her time and history as a prosecutor. This paints a much broader picture of who she is.

In some ways, it's the same on race. In 2008, the Democrats were very, very cautious. Now, the Democrats seem less hesitant to hold space for all her identities. For example, when Trump spoke to the National Association of Black Journalists and he implied that she had just 'turned Black'as a strategy for the campaign, there really didn't seem to be much confusion about that and her supporters and the Democratic Party roundly criticized it. We all know multiracial people exist, and you can be Black and Indian.

I think, as weird as it is to say, in 2008 it was harder for Obama to get folks to understand that he was raised by white grandparents from Kansas, grew up in Hawaii, and is a proud Black man. These complexities of identity were less directly and explicitly discussed in electoral politics, and initially the Democrats were more cautious about talking about them because they seemed more worried that talking about race and calling out racism would lose voters. It does feel we've moved passed that to some extent in part because two terms of Obama, the shifting demographics of the nation, a resurgence of white-supremacist visibility, and social movement campaigns like Black Lives Matter and Stop Asian Hate have meant we've talked a lot about race lately.

You're teaching a course on Gender and Media this fall. How do you plan on incorporating the 2024 election into that class?

I added a section on gender in elections, and so I'm assigning some readings about masculinity and ideas of masculinity in American politics, as well as the role of gender and ideas around femininity in politics globally. There's a reading about Hillary Clinton and some of the misogynistic attacks she faced during her campaign, as well as some meta-analysis looking at how women candidates have shaped and framed their gender in campaigns. I'm excited to be bringing Dr. Meredith Conroy of the Geena Davis Institute in to talk about her book on masculinity and the presidency.

Students will write a midterm paper about a political candidate of their choice. It doesn't have to be an American political candidate; it can be from anywhere in the world. They're going to do a critical analysis, applying theories and concepts from the course, to how gender plays out in their communication and messaging and how their politician is performing various aspects of gendered identity, whether it's masculinity, femininity, neither, or both.

You wrote a book in 2014 about the relationship between Black celebrity activism, journalism, and American politics. How are you seeing that play out now, compared to 10 years ago?

We're in an increasingly celebritized culture, and part of it is because of the influencer economy that arises from social media spaces, where ordinary people have become increasingly celebrified. Some of the development of the Harris persona and the Harris-Walz campaign persona is using the same sort of strategies that an influencer or celebrity might use in their online persona, which is to be at the forefront of the trend but not to take it too far, not to seem inauthentic. Authenticity and affect are highly connected in the development of parasocial relationships with celebrities and it seems the Harris campaign is playing off that, hoping people with form a bond with her because of her online personality.

Celebrities themselves are playing a role in the campaign of course. Charli XCX tweeting 'kamala IS brat' is a great example of that. At the DNC, both Oprah Winfrey and Kerry Washington played fairly prominent roles. Oprah's probably more famous than most American politicians. I also thought it was fascinating to have Kerry Washington there, who played a Washington fixer who worked alongside a president in a political drama as her most famous role in 'Scandal.'

What I expect to see, as November gets closer, is more celebrity endorsements and more celebrity interactions, probably on both sides. There are many people who have critiques of both the Harris and Trump campaigns, and some of them are celebrities. I wouldn't be surprised if we also see some of that moving towards November. We'll see.