How Social Media Influencers Shape the Politics of Young Adults

If the future of democracy and the policies it produces depend on younger generations, whether and how they encounter news and politics is of paramount importance. While political apathy and skepticism of traditional authorities are prevalent among young adults, social media influencers (SMIs) can and do capture their attention. Whether these seemingly-frivolous yet engaging and trusted actors have enduring effects on the policy and political values, substantive and affective attitudes, and behaviors is an important open question. We propose an online field experiment to investigate the impact of encouraging young people to expose themselves to five months of progressive narrative change messages from SMIs on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube as part of the Better Internet Initiative's fellows program. To further understand the incentives for SMIs to serve as political educators, we will further explore the consequences of ``going political'' on an SMI's subsequent audience engagement.