RE-TWEET
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YOUR WAY TO RE-ELECTION
YOUR WAY TO RE-ELECTION
Generation Z Voter Impact,
Social Media Influence, &
National Implication for
U.S. Senate Campaigns
Look out for the newest
generation, ready to
transform the political
landscape -
The Gen Z way.
Tech-addicted. Disengaged. Social justice warriors. Entitled. Anti-social. Shallow.
First it was Millennials, and now it’s Generation Z—young people can’t seem to escape stereotypes about their political behavior.
But Generation Z is so much more than that.
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GEN Z
Tech-Addicted Disengaged
Social Justice Warriors
Entitled Anti-Social
Shallow
It’s a single mother in the Army, a full-time rancher, a beauty blogger, an oilfield worker, a former pageant queen, a barista, a Latinx advocate, and a future teacher.
It’s kids turning 8 and entering third grade, learning about the presidency and their civic duty to vote.
It’s also kids turning 18 and carrying out that civic duty to cast ballots this fall in the 2020 election for the first time.
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Generation Z includes people born between 1997 and 2012, and it is the second-largest age group in Colorado behind Millennials, as well as 10% of all potential voters nationwide. For politicians, it’s also a largely ignored part of the electorate.
These young people belong to the most racially-diverse, the most educated, and the most digitally-connected generation in American history, and they can tell us a lot about the future of Colorado and of the nation.
Domonique Quintana, 21, studies political science at the University of Colorado Boulder. She landed her dream position as an intern for Colorado Senator Michael Bennet in Washington, D.C., but quickly learned how often young people are discounted when it comes to politics.
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“I loved my time there, but it’s like because we’re young we automatically don’t know enough, or our opinions aren’t strong enough, or we aren’t involved enough,” Quintana said. “There were at least 500 interns just like me who were there because they loved politics and they couldn’t get enough of it, so what don’t they get? Why are we overlooked?”
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Perhaps politicians typecast young people as unlikely voters due to their historically low turnout rates and political involvement. The U.S. Census indicates that voting rates for 18- through 29-year-olds decreased from 50.9% in 1964 to 38% in 2012, as opposed to 25- to 44-year-olds, who decreased from 69% to 49.5% in the same period.
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However, in the 2012 election, Colorado was one of 14 states with significantly higher youth voting rates than the national average, and Colorado’s young adults turned out at a rate of 55.7%. The U.S. Census says that while youth voter turnout has decreased in the past 60 years, “historical age-based voting patterns are not set in stone.”
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Data from the Pew Research Center showed that in the 2018 midterm election, America’s youngest voters (Gen Z and Millennials) accounted for a quarter of all votes nationwide. Gen Z cast 4% of ballots across the country in one of the first major elections that many were eligible to vote in. Pew projects that Gen Zers will account for 10% of potential voters by November 2020.
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Not only do they have the numbers to make an impact in the election, but they are also in a crucial stage for developing their political opinions.
Some research states that they may be more conservative than their Millennial predecessors.
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A survey conducted in 2016 by the Hispanic Heritage Foundation polled 50,000 Generation Zers across race, ethnicity, and gender and found the majority of them identify as Republican.
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But while Business Insider claims that Gen Z “is more conservative than many realize,” nearly half of the 1,800 Gen Zers they surveyed did not identify as either liberal or conservative, and the other half was evenly split between the two identities.
In fact, the 2016 book, “Generation Z Goes to College,” showed that 78% of Gen Zers consider themselves liberal to moderate on social issues (with 80% supporting same-sex marriage) while 83% label themselves as moderate to conservative when it comes to fiscal issues.
It seems that these young Americans are not simply the next most liberal generation, but rather one that blurs the lines between typical party affiliations and political ideologies.
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Meet Gen Z
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Taylor Schalk, 21, a senior at the University of Colorado Boulder, said she likes to avoid branding herself with a party affiliation when her views “don’t fit in the boxes that the two major parties have reduced themselves to.”
“I’m pretty socially liberal, but at the same time I am very fiscally conservative,” Schalk said. “I feel like most people in our generation have mixed views like that, we don’t like to be put in a box and labeled as just Democrat or just Republican.”
Elisa McMillan, another 21-year-old University of Colorado Boulder student, calls herself “a moderate mix of my conservative dad and liberal mom.”
Other Gen Zers like Chelsea Peters, 24, a legislative aide at the Colorado State House of Representatives, use more specific terms when describing political ideology.
“I call myself a conservative constitutionalist versus a Republican, because I feel like putting on party labels is just breeding negativity in the era of polarization we’re already in,” Peters said. “So I would rather get down to the meat and the bones of what I believe in and call it like it is.”
For Roice Hanks, 24, an engineering student at the University of Wyoming, his ideologies land “somewhere between a conservative and a libertarian.”
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Wherever these Gen Zers fall on the political spectrum, their beliefs inform the political decisions they make and the issues they care about.
“Being fiscally responsible is at the top of my list, and depending how you look at it, that covers lots and lots of different issues, like post-secondary education, immigration, health care, it’s a lot broader than just taxes,” Hanks said. “After working in ranching my whole life and going to the oilfield after college, I just can’t justify going to work if it’s all going to be taxed away and that’s my biggest concern with this election.”
Some conservative Gen Zers, like Peters, feel that the entire generation is unfairly branded as “liberal college kids,” and that causes politicians “to dismiss young people and assume they know what every young person cares about.”
“I guess I’m non-traditional because I went to school as an unmarried mother with a one-month old, working on my degree so far with literally a child on my lap,” Peters said. “And I’m not anything like the liberal college kids the media portrays as our generation, I don’t support free college for all or mandated healthcare, and I want politicians to hear that too.”
Peters joined the Army right out of high school, serving two years of active duty and attending Fort Hayes State University online in pursuit of her bachelor’s degree in political science.
“I’m sorry, but I feel no remorse for people that are taking out enormous loans and then complaining about it afterwards,” Peters said. “As someone who got an education, I was technically and am now a single mother again, and I figured out a way to go to school, so that’s something I’m so annoyed hearing about repeatedly.”
Others, like Savannah Hart, 21, didn’t pursue a college education after high school and are more concerned with government overreach in the 2020 election. The young, stay-at-home mother works as an associate market builder by selling hair products through social media.
“The U.S. was supposed to be a citizen-ran country and the government is trying to take over and tell us how to live our life when we should be telling the government how to run our country,” Hart said. “It’s not our duty to work for somebody else to live for free I think that is so dumb.”
It’s the opposite for Quintana, as she believes too much importance is placed on economic issues and bases her candidate decisions on their efforts towards “social justice, criminal justice reform, pro-choice, LGBTQ rights, women’s rights, and equality.”
McMillan is most interested in hearing about a candidate’s background and “how they treat others” before making political decisions.
“I care a lot about immigration, overall equality in spaces and equality money-wise,” McMillan said. “I like hearing about candidates’ background and where they come from, and most importantly how they view people and equality issues.”
While the generation obviously differs in beliefs, two things seemed to ring true for all: the search for jobs post-college was at the forefront of their concerns, and their main source of political news gathering is social media.
Gen Z &
Social Media
In 2019, Business Insider conducted a survey of Gen Zers, concluding that 59% of them use social media for political news, particularly Instagram. There are 120.7 million Instagram users in the United States, with 72% of all teens using Instagram. And 65% of Gen Z says they check the site daily, including Peters.
“I check Instagram daily, and a lot of my political news I’m just exposed to at work,” Peters said. “Social media and working in politics make it easy to just receive the news, without really ever having to seek it out.”
That passive reception of news makes it more challenging for politicians to reach younger voters who aren’t actively seeking out their profiles or their posts. Politicians are slowly making their way to the platform, following after young Congress members, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), who are popular with the young audience.
Andrea Colmenero, 23, who serves as a legislative aide at the Colorado State House of Representatives, is one of Ocasio-Cortez’s 4.2 million Instagram followers.
“We’re in an age where people like transparency with how they drive their social media, and that’s attracting a lot of people if you see how many followers each of them has,” Colmenero said, when referring to young politicians. “I think it’s because we’re seeing a new movement in the social media era where we’re seeing Congress members be more transparent about the work they’re doing and about how Congress works.”
Across the aisle, Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) has garnered 1.2 million Instagram followers for implementing the same transparency and engagement.
Peters follows him due to their similar military background, but also for his educational and relatable content.
“I think where the Republican Party is failing is that they’re not having these fun, energetic, young, different-looking people in front of the camera and that’s why I like Dan Crenshaw, he’s the literally the only one that has truly utilized social media,” Peters said. “I love that Crenshaw gives you the facts and makes it very interactive, very understandable and it’s appealing to me to not just see that he believes in something but why he believes in something.”
Peters thinks his ability to use the Story feature on Instagram to engage voter feedback in real-time has been “ingenious” and what young voters would love to see more of. Crenshaw also has a recurring video segment entitled, “Here’s The Truth,” in which he breaks down the facts of varying issues, from the impeachment process to the coronavirus.
In a social media minute, while 347,222 people are scrolling through Instagram, 87,500 people are posting on another key social media platform utilized by Gen Zers for politics: Twitter.
There are 48.4 million monthly active Twitter users in the United States, meaning they follow at least 30 other accounts and are followed back by one-third of those accounts. Thirty-eight percent of these users are between 18 and 29-years-old.
Morning Consult surveyed Gen Zers and concluded that over 50% of the older members of the generation (17-21) use Twitter, which is critical for politicians trying to reach youth coming of voting age.
One politician who has built a distinctive presence on Twitter is President Donald Trump, who has shared over 50,000 tweets with his 74.9 million followers.
“I only follow like seven people on Twitter, and Donald Trump is the reason I even downloaded it,” Hanks said. “I like seeing his take not media-filtered, if he tweets it, it’s coming out of his mouth, and it’s actually kind of nice.”
Toby Hopp, an advertising, public relations, and media design professor from the University of Colorado Boulder, studies how online political communication affects democracy. While social media platforms like Twitter have become increasingly popular for politics in the era of Trump, Hopp cautions that “social media offers democratic opportunities and while also enacting democratic costs.”
Hopp said Trump "does, of course, command a substantial amount of attention on Twitter. That being said, I don't think he provides much in the way of a template that can be used for other politicians. He often times tweets politically inadvisable content, content that is factually incorrect, and/or content that is in violation of Twitter's terms of service.”
Yet some conservative Gen Zers like Jonathan Roesch, 24, an economics graduate from Metropolitan State University and a full-time rancher, enjoy following the Trump precisely because he’s politically incorrect and stirs up controversy.
"You don't hear about prominent Republicans on social media..."
“Young people are on their phones 24/7, and the only real Republican that’s prominent on social media that you really hear about is Donald Trump,” Roesch said. “None of the, like, senators or anything like that are really on it, that you hear about anyway.”
This may be of particular interest to re-election hopeful, Colorado Republican Senator Cory Gardner, who Roll Call deemed “The Most Vulnerable Senator of 2020.”
Though his opponent for the fall isn’t guaranteed, the Democratic frontrunner is John Hickenlooper, the former Colorado governor.
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Incumbent senators typically have the advantage in states that lean towards their party, and they may rely on name recognition and approval ratings to win re-election. However, Gardner is running in a purple state against another prominent Coloradan who also possesses name recognition.
And in the 2018 election, Colorado’s voters leaned more blue, electing a Democratic majority in both the state house and state senate, and electing Democrat Jared Polis as the nation’s first openly gay governor.
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Shannon McGregor, a communication professor from the University of Utah who studies politics and social media, says that incumbents may be tempted to assume safety in more competitive states and “may not see a huge benefit from devoting time, staff resources, and financial resources to these social media accounts.”
But newcomers and challengers, who have to introduce themselves to voters and advertise their campaigns, are more likely to harness the power of social media and reap its benefits.
“To the extent that people can build really big followings or have some of these viral moments, and I’m talking about newcomers or challengers, that’s where you can see social media be really powerful and you can see an incumbent be sort of forced to respond,” McGregor said.
“Challengers are able to create these really compelling viral moments or build up a strong social media following which then of course generates news coverage, which then gets their name out even more, and that’s when we see the power of social media really sort of be influential.”
Since both Gardner and Hickenlooper have track records in Colorado politics, they may be tempted to rely on name recognition and past voter turnout and not tap into the power of social media. But as 2020 is a presidential election year, voter turnout will be higher in general, making the Senate race all the more potentially contentious.
As the election draws nearer and political messaging increases, these two politicians must maintain an engaging social media presence to cut through the noise and establish a voice, now more than ever.
Anand Sokhey, a political science professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, said that social media will “play an increasing role as we look towards the 2020 election.”
“With the COVID-19 social distancing measures, in many places it [social media] will essentially be the only real interaction that campaigns have with voters,” Sokhey said. “So, I'd say that it was going to play a big role, and now it's going to play an unprecedented role -- it's an open question what that will look like.”
Jerrod Dobkin, the communications director for Gardner’s re-election campaign, said that social media is “a really good way to directly communicate with the voters.”
“We still use traditional news media and Senator Gardner does interviews with anywhere from the Denver Post to CBS4, your local news channel,” Dobkin said. “But if you want to talk directly to the voters, you can use social media and it’s a great way to do it.”
Perhaps politicians like Gardner can “talk” to the voters through social media by tweeting or posting, but it isn’t much of a conversation if the voters aren’t responding, or even following on the politician’s social media.
Many Gen Zers like Roesch, who share the same party as Gardner, don’t follow him on social media.
“I think he’s alright, he was raised around agriculture like me and I think he’s an advocate for agriculture more than other politicians,” Roesch said. “But I wouldn’t go out of my way to follow him because it doesn’t seem all that informative or interesting to me, like Trump.”
Similarly, Hanks said that he only follows politicians who give him a reason to follow them.
“I like the rawness of Trump’s Twitter, and I wish politicians would be more genuine like that,” Hanks said. “I don’t know if Cory Gardner has a Twitter or anything like that but if he does I haven’t heard of it, ‘cause he obviously doesn’t tweet anything worth reading.”
To find out if his social media was truly “worth reading” to Gen Zers, I conducted an analysis comparing the Twitter and Instagram accounts of Gardner, Hickenlooper, Ocasio-Cortez, and Crenshaw.
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Politicians
on Social Media
The numbers for Gardner and Hickenlooper paled in comparison to Ocasio-Cortez and Crenshaw, who are considered social media “stars.” As of March 1, 2020, Hickenlooper (@Hickenlooper) had 169,300 Twitter followers and 4,730 tweets, while Gardner (@SenCoryGardner) had 138,700 followers and 5,174 tweets on his congressional Twitter. In contrast, AOC (@AOC) tweeted 9,894 times to her 6.4 million followers and Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) tweeted 1,358 times to his 774,000 followers.
Gardner, Crenshaw, and AOC all have congressional Twitter accounts (@SenCoryGardner, @RepDanCrenshaw, and @RepAOC) as well as personal Twitter accounts (@CoryGardner, @DanCrenshawTX, and @AOC). Yet while the two representatives mainly use their personal Twitter accounts, Gardner opts for his official, congressional account instead. His personal Twitter account only had 19,000 followers and 1,620 tweets as of March 1, 2020.
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Dobkin said this is because Gardner has been more focused on posting about his work in office.
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“For us, our official Twitter account for the past five years has been much more active because we weren’t in the middle of actively campaigning,” Dobkin said. “Now that we’re ramping up our campaign twitter account, we’ve tried to do posts every day and it will grow more and more.”
But even if a politician is not actively campaigning, they can still utilize their personal accounts to connect with young voters and post more authentic, interesting, and relatable content outside of their official, congressional content – which is something that both Crenshaw and Ocasio-Cortez do regularly.
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Gardner can utilize both profiles, but the staff members that assist with congressional social media accounts must be separate from the staff members that assist with campaign social media accounts.
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“By law, the official staff that runs Gardner’s official Twitter doesn’t know what the campaign staffers are doing on social media, and vice versa,” Dobkin said. “I’ve worked in both places and Senator Gardner is involved kind of with what goes up on Twitter accounts, he’ll send his ideas over and it runs past him. He oversees both and is involved in both.”
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In an email interview, Hopp partially attributed the personal versus official account usage to generational differences between “non-traditional politicians” like Ocasio-Cortez and “non-digital natives” like Gardner.
“My guess is that in her [AOC’s] pre-political life she used social media in a way not so dissimilar from you and I - to stay in touch with friends, learn about things going on in the world, and so on,” Hopp said. “Once she became a political figure, she simply modified this behavior to help her achieve her political and electoral objectives. As a non-digital native, Gardner is a bit different. He's using social media in a politically instrumental (i.e., personally inauthentic) way insofar as he sees it as a one-way communication tool that has potential primarily as it relates to top-down brand management."
This inauthentic use of social media is evident to Gen Zers because, as digital natives, they have never known life outside of the Internet, cellphones, or social media. Growing up around this technology is like growing up and learning a language—you become fluent in it, and you can easily identify a “non-digital native” when they attempt to communicate without fully understanding or speaking the language.
Each social media platform has its own, distinctive “language” that requires different etiquette. Twitter, a text-based medium, differs from Instagram, a predominantly visual outlet.
On Instagram, the “stars” actually had fewer posts than the two Colorado politicians’ pages, with Gardner at 743, Hickenlooper at 640, Crenshaw at 528, and Ocasio-Cortez at 416.
However, Ocasio-Cortez has nearly 700 times as many Instagram followers as Gardner with 4.2 million to his 6,058. Crenshaw similarly has almost 200 times as many followers as Gardner with 1.2 million.
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This indicates a quantity versus quality dynamic on Instagram that was not as apparent on Twitter. While politicians often tweet several times per day on Twitter, this chiefly visual medium calls for people to post quality, on-brand, original content, and less of it so as not to “clog up the feed.”
Hart says that with her profession depending on social media, she has learned to balance posting often enough to stay relevant with not posting too often that you “clog up the feed of potential clients because they see that you clearly don’t know how to use Instagram.”
“There’s no point of being on social media if you’re not following the, like, so-called unofficial rules of the site,” Hart said. “We can tell when somebody doesn’t get it when they put like six pictures up in one day, they’re not edited, they have either cringey captions or like overused quotes and hashtags, and it’s just fake, fake, fake.”
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So while Gardner and Hickenlooper may post more often than Crenshaw and AOC, Instagram is not a site in which quantity is desirable.
“I compare it to people becoming a beauty blogger where you can’t just post a bunch of stuff on Instagram if it’s like sub-par content, and expect to gain followers,” Schalk said. “It’s the same with anybody, it takes work and you have to post stuff that you’re passionate about and genuinely put time and effort into getting people’s attention.”
It’s also important on Instagram to utilize the Story function to post polls, live videos, question-and-answer sessions, or simply “behind-the-scenes footage that young people crave.”
“AOC shares behind-the-scenes footage and just really gives her followers a deep dive into every stage of the political process,” Colmenero said. “It’s not only her policy work, but her own personal views and personal life, and I think it’s so important.”
McGregor has performed extensive research regarding how politicians utilize various social media platforms.
“We see someone like AOC using Instagram for not only some official stuff but also to talk about her cooking, her skincare routine, like really personal things,” McGregor said. “There is research that suggests that that makes people feel more connected to a politician and feel more favorable about them because then they feel like they know who they are and have some relationship with them.”
While Ocasio-Cortez has recently been posting on her Instagram only about once a month, she still retains her 4.2 million followers. Like celebrity users, it seems that the quality and relevance of her content outweighs the misconception that a large quantity of posts implies success.
“Social media is kind of like being the popular kid in high school versus being the smart kid who has really good ideas, but nobody wants to listen to them,” Hart said. “The popular kid who knows how to present themselves and be relevant to the most people is going to be able to convince them of things more than the smart kid, even if the smart kid has better ideas.”
With the rise of social media, perhaps politics may turn into more of a popularity contest.
"If you can't, then you really need to get off social media..."
“The most relatable stuff is real life, and when you can capture that on your social, that’s when you reach thousands if not millions of people,” Hart said. “Like why are you trying to be fake or quote other people? Be realistic, be true and honest, because everybody can see bullshit from a mile away, and if you can’t then you really need to, like, get off social media.”
What do they
Tweet about?
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After following the Instagram and Twitter accounts of the four politicians for six months, the content of their posts is broken down here with how many times they posted and the content of the posts.
Each week, I selected a different day to analyze the politicians, two at a time with one Republican and one Democrat. For example, during the first week of September, Gardner and Ocasio-Cortez were analyzed on Sunday, Sept. 1, and Hickenlooper and Crenshaw were analyzed on Monday, Sept. 2. The next week, Gardner and Ocasio-Cortez were analyzed on Monday, while Hickenlooper and Crenshaw were analyzed on Tuesday, and so on for six months.
The content of their posts was broadly and narrowly categorized to display differences.
Comparing the Republican content charts on the left to the Democratic content charts on the right, it’s clear that foreign relations is the most common category for the two Republicans and the economy, the environment, and the president are the most common topics for the two Democrats.
Between the two Coloradans, Gardner posts about foreign relations and the economy most often, while Hickenlooper focuses on the environment and state infrastructure. Hickenlooper’s feed is more diversified among categories and Gardner’s is concentrated on only a handful of issues.
Gardner completely omitted posts in the education, social justice, and presidential categories. Hickenlooper had no tweets or posts regarding foreign relations, while Gardner’s is the exact opposite with the bulk of his content focusing on those issues, such as trade, immigration, and international news.
Another interesting dynamic to observe is how the social media stars both devote 15% of their tweets to the president, with Crenshaw’s mostly positive and Ocasio-Cortez's mostly negative. The two Coloradans barely address Trump, perhaps to dissociate themselves with the commander-in-chief’s social media antics entirely as they look to win the Senate race in a purple state.
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Sokhey noted that it may be harmful for politicians to link themselves to Trump, his tactics, or the highly controversial content shares.
“If you make a mistake on social media, most politicians are not going to be granted the same leeway as Trump by the public,” Sokhey said. “So, while I think you'll continue to see politicians use social media to reach out, endorse, give opinions, few will try to do the free-wheeling, stream of consciousness thing that Trump does.”
Broadening these categories into four major content areas illustrates another dichotomy. The categories include “Issues of the Day,” meaning topics that were trending in the news; “Politics,” meaning they posted about the government, the opposing party, or the president; “Election,” meaning they discussed their own party and efforts to remain in (or be elected to) office; and “Other,” which mostly encompassed non-political posts, such as holidays.
Gardner’s combined Instagram and Twitter feeds feature three-quarters “Issues of the Day,” and about one-quarter non-political “Other” posts. Hickenlooper’s feed contains fewer “Issues of the Day” and more posts regarding his election. This is partly attributable to the fact that Gardner mainly posts on his congressional accounts, not his personal accounts. On his official accounts, he must focus on his duties as a senator and cannot post about his campaign.
Nonetheless, Gardner could still post about townhalls, his personal views on issues, or other politicians running for election to generate election content (for example, Ocasio-Cortez endorsing Bernie Sanders on her page is considered an “Election” post). But his singular election-related post in the analysis came at the end of February regarding precinct caucuses.
In contrast, the social media “stars” have a more balanced feed to cater to their millions of followers. Crenshaw posts more about politics (in regard to the president, the opposing party, and the government) than any of the other three politicians, while Ocasio-Cortez has the most evenly distributed “Election,” “Politics,” and “Other” posts.
And while 75% of Gardner’s posts are “Issues of the Day,” on the same day that the other politicians were addressing the whistleblower news and the impeachment hearings (Sept. 25 for Gardner and Ocasio-Crotez and Sept. 26 for Hickenlooper and Crenshaw per the weekly analysis schedule), Gardner was the only one that didn’t address the matter. It seems as though Gardner addresses issues that aren’t particularly contentious and avoids posts that have anything to do with the president or the Democratic party.
Another concern with Gardner’s social media is his tendency of “getting ratioed.” This occurs on Twitter when a tweet receives more replies than favorites and the replies are critical, negative, or controversial.
After comparing the ratios of Hickenlooper’s and Gardner’s tweets during the last week of February, both averaged around the same number of tweets as well as favorites per tweet. Hickenlooper tweeted 27 times with an average of 146 favorites, and Gardner tweeted 26 times with an average of 141 favorites.
However, Hickenlooper's tweets received an average of 9.5 comments and Gardner's tweets received more than ten times that with an average of 95.6 comments per tweet.
For some, this may be cause for concern. But Hopp doesn’t believe it has too much of an effect on the senator.
“His presence on Twitter is unremarkable,” Hopp said. “The comments under his tweets give upset constituents a place to yell at him. Obviously, this doesn't help his reputation. Does this actively ‘hurt’ him, electorally speaking? Probably not in any measurable, cause-and-effect type way.”
Gen Z Perceptions of Politicians
Gardner’s content and behavior on social media does impact how Gen Zers perceive their senator, however.
“I know that all generations are starting to get on social media, but our age group, like, all of this looks really boring to me,” said Schalk. “It’s not an account even if I’m really passionate about Cory Gardner and his message and his mission, I would not follow him because it would just, like, clog up my feed instead of be stuff that I would, like, want to pay attention to I guess because t’s not innovative or creative, it’s just boring.”
As an intern in Washington, D.C., Schalk worked for U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) and often drafted posts for his social media, though he was always involved in keeping his own thoughts at the forefront of his account.
“I think him having a voice and what he wanted on his social media made it more authentic,” Schalk said. “I feel like looking at Cory Gardner’s feed, I don’t know really what his voice is, like I can’t tell what kind of personality he has, or what he cares about, and that doesn’t feel authentic.”
Quintana said she did a lot of research as a congressional intern to find out what other politicians were saying on social media and find the conversations that her boss could join. When users specifically reply to a tweet with a sarcastic, witty, or bold remark, it’s called a clapback, and Quintana said it’s “obvious that most of them just don’t get how important those are.”
"Politicians don't really know how to clapback..."
“I think strategically you need to play on what’s going on, on what politicians are tweeting, and just kind of go at it that way, like a creative way,” Quintana said. “In our office, how we looked at Trump’s tweets and clapped back at him, and a lot of politicians don’t really know how to clapback at each other they just let it be, and no, I think it’s important.”
One of Ocasio-Cortez's most-favorited tweets, with 416,500 likes, is a clapback at Donald Trump, indicating how much attention nine words can generate.
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Representative Crenshaw also garners quite a bit of attention for his clapback tweets.
Not only do these tweets display an understanding of how the social medium works, but also how to interact with other users, as opposed to being impersonal and only posting on one’s own profile while ignoring other users on the platform.
McGregor pointed out that this may be tempting on Instagram because it has less direct interaction between strangers, but in order to truly immerse yourself the medium and gain followers, you have to be somewhat personal.
“The more visual you get, like Instagram, the more personal it is with so many images of us and our family, it’s a very personal medium,” McGregor said. “So politicians who are good at it know that and are personal on it because you have to be, it would be weird if you were very business-only like you might be on Twitter on a platform like Instagram.”
“Weird” is exactly how McMillan, the CU Boulder environmental design student, described Gardner’s Instagram feed for not being able to discern his party affiliation after scrolling through several weeks of posts.
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Quintana noted that Gardner and Hickenlooper are often “by themselves” in their Instagram pictures, which isn’t a “positive thing for them.”
“While they’re standing in an office or staging a picture at a townhall, AOC is posting pictures with other people, about other people, and that’s just more someone I feel like would care about my concerns,” Quintana said. “She uses social media and uplifts other women and doesn’t seem all for herself, which to me is more authentic.”
McMillan found authenticity in a photo on Hickenlooper’s Instagram, though, that changed her perspective from “a boring old guy” to “someone who I’d trust in office.”
“He’s eating at my favorite Mexican restaurant, talking with Latinas about issues, and I’m a Latina,” McMillan said. “That’s something I can relate to, like I see that and I say, ‘Maybe he’d care about what I have to say too.’”
Hickenlooper also received style points from Gen Zers for his “cohesive color scheme” and for his Instagram biography that demonstrated an understanding of the cleverness of the medium:
“Former Governor of Colorado & Mayor of Denver. Dad. Husband. Craft brewer and occasional banjo player. Running for U.S. Senate in Colorado.”
Hickenlooper’s Instagram Gardner’s Instagram
Nonetheless, several Gen Zers like Schalk indicated “when you look more into it [Hickenlooper’s Instagram], it is kind of ‘blah.’”
Hopp suggests that social media can be used to stimulate young people’s interest in politics, but it must be the “product of smart strategy.”
“Using social media effectively requires a strategy and substantial effort,” Hopp said. “It takes time and resources and a desire to use a given platform to connect with others. If political figures are willing to put in this time and effort, they can, potentially, see gains, particularly as they relate to the ability to articulate one's personal and political brand.”
Dobkin said the Gardner campaign is actively looking for a digital director to manage the senator’s social media, which is one of Dobkin’s job responsibilities currently. They also plan to ramp up their physical outreach to younger voters.
“We’ll be doing all sorts of other things, college campus visits with college Republican groups and things like that,” Dobkin said. “We need to do more of those, because I think no vote should ever be looked over for every single person.”
McMillan said that mainly Democrats have visited her college campus though, yet she hopes that Gardner’s team will follow through on their plans to change that standard.
“I think getting out into the public and going to these places where kids are is important, because like, Bernie Sanders came to CU Boulder and so we all know him and we feel like he will listen to us ‘cause he came to us,” McMillan said. “Whereas, like, Donald Trump, when we came to Colorado, he didn’t come to the universities because he didn’t think that he could get our vote, so why would he even try then?”
While physical presence is important, the Global Web Index shows that Gen Zers spend an average of 3 hours and 38 minutes on their phones every day. Social media continues to be their arena of choice for entertainment, news, and politics. That makes it more important for politicians to learn the “language” of major social media platforms to increase their chances that the youth vote will turnout in their favor this fall.
S O C I A L
media tips
In a social media minute...
347,222 people scrolling on Instagram
87,500 people scrolling on Twitter
What do Gen Zers want to see from politicians on these social media platforms?
1. Cohesive Brand
"Everything is about aesthetic these days. If your Instagram does not have a certain filter on every single photo, or doesn’t follow your brand, everybody’s attention span goes away."
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Gen Zers have an average attention span of 8 SECONDS
so if politicians want to reach them they have a small window for capturing their attention.
2. Relatable Content
"If you want to shop or look for products or see what people are doing that you want to do, you go to social media. It could be the same for politicians if they post things that show they're real-life people too, I think that it’s all about finding your niche and getting in there."
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Gen Zers liked AOC's post about Netflix and Crenshaw's post about the Houston Astros MLB team -- they recommend breaking up the political speak with real life.
3. Authenticity
"Growing up with social media, we can easily tell if something is staged, or written by someone else, like we don't like that type of content. Politicians should be authentic to who they are outside of politics, like yes still share your policies or whatever, but in your own words and in an interesting way."
"Don't have someone else writing about what you're doing, write about what you're doing like you care about it and maybe we will too."
In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has placed an even greater significance on social media, especially for politicians to gain the trust and loyalty of the public.
“It's tough to say how exactly how social media will influence politics in the future. We're living in an unprecedented moment of political, social, and economic uncertainty,” Hopp said. “Even before COVID-19, people didn't have much trust in their elected officials or government. One worry that I have is that social media can be used to further undermine what trust currently exists, further distancing people from their governments and creating conditions amenable to anti-democratic actors.”
Time is of the essence for politicians, and Dobkin said that Gardner’s campaign recently launched their campaign Instagram account in hopes to reach a more youthful audience.
“In terms of strategy we want to reach every voter, every Coloradan, whether that person is 80 years old, 50 years old, or just turned 18, our strategy is to hopefully win over their vote,” Dobkin said. “We recently launched the campaign Instagram and we hope to build that up, and I’m assuming a lot of those followers will be younger voters.”
Though this may be the strategy, the reactions from Gen Zers don’t entirely reflect that sentiment. Simply creating an account and posting “sub-par content” is not enough to generate follows. Social media users have to be engaging, relatable, and authentic if they want to gain followers, and the same rings true for Gardner.
In fact, many were turned off by Gardner’s social media, and Republican Gen Zers reiterated their appreciation for the “authenticity and reality” present in Trump’s social media.
“You don’t hear about prominent Republicans on social media,” Roesch said. “I think that’s big play that they’re missing out on to connect with young people.”
While Hopp does not recommend that politicians follow Trump’s “politically inadvisable content,” he does suggest that Gardner must do something about the dry content that left Gen Zers confused, bored, and wanting more.
“Perhaps the main thing you can take away from Trump's behavior is that it communicates a sense of personality and authenticity,” Hopp said. “This can be contrasted to Gardner's accounts, which tend to be dry, administrative, and, frankly speaking, quite boring. I'm not saying Gardner should start typing things like ‘that's lit af fam,’ but giving voters some idea of who he is as a human being might not necessarily be a bad thing.”