Paid influencers are now a pervasive feature of US politics, yet the legal framework governing their disclosure remains largely absent, according to researchers Martin J Riedl and Samuel Woolley. In a recent opinion piece, they argue that secret coordination between politicians and social media creators constitutes a new form of astroturfing, undermining democratic communication and election integrity.
The rise of political influencers
Riedl, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee’s School of Journalism and Media and a senior fellow at the Information Integrity Institute, and Woolley, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh who directs Pitt CTRL, have tracked this phenomenon for several years. They note that many influencers do not disclose when they are paid to endorse candidates or ideas.
Recent high-profile examples illustrate the trend. The Pentagon secretly assigned conservative influencers to promote Pete Hegseth’s “warrior ethos” for the armed forces, though a Pentagon spokesperson did not respond to the Washington Post’s question about whether they received a salary. New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani uses a network of friendly, unpaid influencers to communicate with gen Z. During his failed run for governor of California, Tom Steyer hired creators to promote his campaign, some of whom did not disclose their payment. When former secretary of homeland security Kristi Noem toured an ICE facility in Portland, Oregon, last year, she was accompanied by three conservative influencers, though whether they were paid remains unclear.
Regulatory gaps and ethical concerns
The federal regulatory environment in the United States does not provide guardrails requiring disclosure from influencers promoting politics in exchange for payment, the researchers state. While some states have laws mandating transparency, those are typically limited to local elections. Occasional pushes for federal transparency bills are unlikely to succeed due to gridlock in Washington.
This lack of transparency benefits influencers capitalizing on politics and helps politicians appear genuinely popular with the digital “in” crowd, but it constitutes a new form of political astroturfing, according to Riedl and Woolley. They describe it as computational propaganda, substituting bots and AI—sometimes influencers themselves are AI avatars—for coordinated groups of paid creators. The goal is to manipulate trending and recommendation algorithms and public opinion in favor of those paying.
Research findings and recommendations
Their latest work proposes an ethical framework for influencer conduct, arguing for authentic, autonomous, and transparent behavior, with disclosure of any payment for promoting a political candidate, cause, or campaign. However, a worrying empirical finding emerged from a research team at the University of Tennessee’s Information Integrity Institute: people who consumed more content from political influencers cared less about disclosure. The researchers hypothesize that heavy social media users assume all creators get paid in some way, regardless of disclosure, and have become inured to online astroturfing in an era of digital disinformation.
Ethical political influencer conduct, they argue, requires creators to take responsibility as information purveyors, serving as role models rather than spin doctors. Creators should retain autonomy, be true to their own beliefs, and clearly distinguish opinion from genuine news. Most importantly, they should disclose any payments or perks from a campaign.
Impact and next steps
Survey data indicate that people who prize authenticity among creators are more supportive of paid political influencer disclosure requirements, suggesting that authenticity and disclosure can go hand in hand. Without oversight, influencers will likely continue promoting politics for payment without disclosure, degrading the information ecosystem and risking being lumped with AI slop and falsehoods online.
If Congress will not act, the researchers appeal directly to campaigns, influencer marketing companies, social media platforms, and creators themselves. They suggest that influencers who adopt principles of authenticity, autonomy, and payment acknowledgment could significantly improve the integrity of political communication, helping voters understand whether those speaking loudest online do so because they genuinely care or because they are paid.
