Jordi Rodríguez Virgili is a Doctor at the Universidad de Navarra, Spain

Other results of the U.S. presidential election: conversational podcasts and influencers win out over traditional media

Traditional media lose prominence

In addition to Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party, another of the big losers of these elections was the traditional media. And not because they had overwhelmingly supported the vice-presidential choice, or not only, but because they have ceased to be the main stage of public debate in an election. We already knew that the traditional media had long ago lost the quasi-monopoly of access to information and, therefore, part of the construction of reality, but these elections have shown that they have also lost their main protagonists.

Trump repeated his 2016 strategy of confrontation with the media, which he places as part of the system (establishment) guilty of the situation of the country and which tries by all means to prevent him from coming to power. For her part, Kamala Harris has also avoided as much as possible her presence in traditional media and, when she has gone, in the dates closest to the elections, she showed herself uncomfortable and imprecisely reformulating questions or even questioning them without answering them completely.

Suffice it to say that newspapers such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) or The Washington Post have not managed to interview either Harris or Trump during the election campaign.

The prominence of conversational podcasts 

The appearance of politicians in podcasts, usually on non-political topics, is not a novel strategy, but in this election, it has been a key electoral strategy that reveals a new trend in political communication.

Donald Trump’s appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience was the culmination of a tour that began in June 2024 on the podcast Impaulsive, hosted by youtuber and professional wrestler Logan Paul, and has taken him on more than twenty shows, none of them from a traditional medium.

The interview with Trump by Joe Rogan -comedian and martial arts commentator- lasted more than three hours. A conversation on the most listened podcast in the world, which in the first days already had more than 45 million views on YouTube. A figure to which must be added to the plays on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and other audio platforms.

Kamala Harris has also made her podcast appearances a centerpiece of her presidential campaign. Her interview with Alex Cooper on the podcast Call her daddy, the most listened to program among women under 35 and whose focus is conversations about sex and relationships, has been one of her most talked about appearances.

YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and all other video and audio platforms have become important platforms for political opinion and debate. We will need rigorous research, but we can venture that candidates seek out these conversational podcast formats, at the very least:

  • Greater intimacy and humanization: “Engaging with podcasters, comedians and influencers allows people to see that human side of President Trump that the mainstream media deliberately won’t cover,” Trump campaign advisor Alex Bruesewitz told Forbes. These conversations are an emotional window into the guest’s private life, with details, anecdotes and even unusual moments of insight and empathy.
  • More effective audience segmentation. Trump has visited programs with predominantly male audiences, which has allowed him to reach an audience that is young, online, and predisposed to support him, but less likely to vote. In these conversations, Trump addressed his usual points such as immigration or the economy, but also made forays into topics such as golf, professional fights or life on Mars. Harris, on the other hand, has preferred programs with audiences composed mainly of women and black men. In Call her daddy she talked about abortion and her intention to legalize it, and in Unlocking Us, Brené Brown’s program that focuses on human vulnerability, she talked about the fragility of democracy. On the podcast All The Smoke, hosted by former NBA stars Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, he spoke about marijuana and asserted that people should not go to jail for possessing the drug.
  • Greater comfort. Compared to traditional interviews, these conversations tend to be more “friendly”, less compromising and easier to carry. Professional journalists test the soundness of the candidates’ proposals and arguments, cross-examine with the always problematic time limit. Podcasts seem to be unhurried, let candidates elaborate on their answers, and rarely look for inconsistencies or contradictions in their responses.

“You are the media now” by Elon Musk

The day after Trump’s triumph, Elon Musk wanted to underline the crisis of traditional journalism and highlight the notoriety of influencers by fallaciously telling his entire audience of X: “You are the media now”.

Influencers have been another winner in the communication flow of this election. Both Republicans and Democrats credited content creators with covering their conventions and encouraged influencers to share their political messages. Influencers also interviewed candidates and hosted fundraising events for them. The Pew Research Center’s detailed study accounts for the relevance of this trend.  

Clearly, in the media landscape and in the complex marriage between media and democracy, a new actor has entered the scene, one that is more difficult to control and whose influence is not measurable with traditional systems. It is imperative to understand the role and influence of the so-called peripheral media.