To many observers, the Republican Party’s victory in last year’s US Presidential election was a pivotal moment in the long-declining power of traditional news media. Rather than focusing on mainstream news, the Republican campaign turned to podcasters, YouTubers, and TikTok creators to get their message out. This was an unorthodox strategy, but it became key to reaching young and undecided voters, a bloc that likely helped Donald Trump secure the presidency.
These digital news content creators, now often collectively categorized under the loose umbrella term of “news influencers” or “newsfluencers,” have been depicted in opposition to the values, formats, and aesthetics of traditional journalism. Where journalists traditionally perceive themselves as “objective,” newsfluencers are more often unabashedly opinionated and willing to share their political and personal values. While journalists often rely on a formal and dispassionate delivery, newsfluencers are emotive and “authentic.” Whereas journalism is associated with a news industry comprised of news outlets and conglomerates, newsfluencers are mostly individual “creators,” sometimes employing small or medium-sized teams.
Newsfluencers have been pitched as the “future” of news media. Democrats in the US are trying to find the “Joe Rogan of the Left” —a reference to one of the world’s most popular podcasters, who is also known for sharing anti-vaccine and “manosphere” beliefs. Elsewhere, politicians are increasingly embracing podcasts as alternative channels for campaign messaging. Traditional news organizations are also experimenting with influencer-style formats like podcasts and short-form and personality-driven news videos intended for social media; such content has been embraced by the Washington Post, the BBC, and the Australian ABC, among others. And yet, the rise of newsfluencers has raised concerns about a fracturing and increasingly partisan news ecology. Newsfluencers have even been cast as engines of “radicalization” for disaffected young people.
What is driving these transformations in news production, distribution, and consumption? What can the news industry learn from newsfluencers? Are newsfluencers really such a groundbreaking new thing anyway?
Lineages: bloggers and microcelebrities
Newsfluencers share lineages with independent digital media from previous internet eras; their formats and cultures are deeply informed by the creators who came before them.
We can see the roots of newsfluencers in the Web 2.0 “blogosphere” that emerged in the 2000s. This was a loosely connected network of sites and creators who, like newsfluencers, communicated to their audiences in the more informal tone of a personal log. Often, these blogs discussed daily life or the personal interests of the bloggers, but others also covered or even broke news. Perhaps the most famous such case was the Iraqi blogger Salam Pax who, along with other Iraq-based bloggers, documented life in Iraq before and after the 2003 US-led invasion. These bloggers blended personal and news content by reporting on the ground from a first-person perspective. This mixture of factual news and personal commentary made the reporting from these bloggers feel more grounded, real, and “authentic.” They grew devoted followers and were aided by platforms, such as Blogger, that sprung up to support (and later monetize) this nascent blogosphere.
Alongside bloggers, another cultural phenomenon from the 2000s that informed the rise of newsfluencers was the rise of “microcelebrities.” This was a term coined to describe people who were famous online—in contrast to “real-world” celebrities in traditional media, like film, television, and music stars. Some microcelebrities were bloggers, but many others found their fame in the early days of YouTube and had dedicated online communities. Microcelebrities also didn’t necessarily produce news content. But the kinds of techno-cultural dynamics now associated with newsfluencers—from “parasocial” fandoms and participatory audiences, to internet drama between creators—were all integral to the microcelebrities phenomenon. These microcelebrities also grew in a time when engagement-hungry algorithms were increasingly shaping what was recommended on Facebook, YouTube, and other early social media platforms. And, as with newsfluencers, there was a divide between older generations, who still watched the news on TV, and younger people whose media environment increasingly consisted of microcelebrities who could speak to and “for” their very online generation.
Key qualities of newsfluencers—their rejection of objectivity in favor of a more personal and authentic “voice,” their reliance on digital platforms for audience growth and revenue, and their devoted fandoms—can all be found in earlier phenomena.
The early 2010s also saw the rise of youth digital media companies that blended pop-culture, a conversational style, and news content. Sites like BuzzFeedare stand-out examples in this genre. Many of these sites also took openly progressive positions on social issues, such as marriage equality, as a way to differentiate themselves from older news media.
In these respects, key qualities of newsfluencers—their rejection of objectivity in favor of a more personal and authentic “voice,” their reliance on digital platforms for audience growth and revenue, and their devoted fandoms—can all be found in these earlier phenomena.
What is driving the popularity of newsfluencers?
Younger audiences have been shifting to online creators and digital communities and away from traditional news media for decades now. The diversification and fragmentation of “mass media” has been a long, ongoing process. But, while newsfluencers are not entirely new, their current growth, appeal, and reach is being driven by unmistakably contemporary social, economic, and political features.
Firstly, newsfluencers are deeply implicated in the social issues of the 2010s and 2020s. This can be viewed through the emergence of the so-called “manosphere,” a loose online network of masculinity and anti-feminist creators and communities. These newsfluencers have capitalized on contemporary anxieties surrounding gender roles, especially from young males, to build massive online followings and influence. Not all this content is extreme in nature. “Moderate” manosphere content includes motivational life advice provided by people like Joe Rogan, fitness vlogs from bodybuilding YouTubers like Sam Sulek, or chat shows from podcasters like Theo Von. But some of it can be extreme, like the anti-women messaging from newsfluencers such as Andrew Tate. On the other hand, this online environment has enabled feminist creators to also develop large platforms, such as the Australian podcasters and Instagram creators Abbie Chatfield and Hannah Ferguson and, in the US, people like Jessica Valenti.
Other social issues, such as racism, have also fueled newsfluencers, from both ends of the political spectrum. In the context of movements like Black Lives Matter, anti-racist content creators have grown their reach amongst sympathetic audiences on platforms like YouTube and TikTok. Far-right racist creators have similarly been able to draw upon contemporary anxieties around religion and immigration, as well as “wokeness” and “cancel culture,” with success. Many newsfluencers on the far right, like Milo Yiannopoulos and Steven Crowder, infamously made their names in the 2010s by touring US college campuses and “triggering” left-wing students by discussing racial issues and other controversial topics. Clips from these campus tours and other real-life events, such as protests, were then edited and circulated on social media—a lucrative content strategy that other newsfluencers have since adopted.
Newsfluencers have grown due to their coverage of social issues, such as gender and racial inequality. But newsfluencers have also been catering to audiences who feel as though mainstream media and politicians do not adequately represent them, report on the issues they care about, or reflect the anxieties they are feeling.
Secondly, newsfluencers have emerged within the context of an economic crisis in the global news industry that has reached acute levels in recent years. Old print-based advertising revenue models are no longer viable as digital platforms dominate the ad market and new models—like digital subscriptions and “native advertising”—are struggling to sufficiently address this revenue gap. The result has been accelerating job losses and newsroom closures leading to gaps in coverage that newsfluencers have filled. On the other hand, redundancies and a lack of jobs in the news industry have also incentivized journalists to “go solo,” by taking advantage of subscription platforms such as Substack and Patreon to monetize their work. Some journalists have been successful at pursuing this “creator model”—former Verge journalist Casey Newton, for instance, has built a small newsroom. So has Ryan Broderick, an internet culture reporter who previously worked at BuzzFeed.
Lastly, newsfluencers have benefited from the global political turmoil of the 2010s and 2020s. As discussed above, many prominent newsfluencers have grown in part due to their coverage of and activism on specific social issues, such as gender and racial inequality. But more broadly during this period, newsfluencers have also been catering to audiences who feel as though mainstream media and politicians do not adequately represent them, report on the issues they care about, or reflect the anxieties they are feeling.
The impact of these three factors can be seen in a variety of cases. The COVID-19 pandemic was fertile ground for budding newsfluencers, especially conspiracy theorists who claimed to tell audiences what was “really going on” during the especially stressful lockdown periods. And, perhaps most infamously, the far-right American conspiracist Alex Jones has built a significant online following by tapping into grievances and anxieties about “Big Government” overreach on issues such as guns and economic regulations. Economic inequality has also driven newsfluencers: the British YouTuber Gary Stevenson, for instance, has built an audience reporting on economics and poverty in an accessible way while tapping into deep frustrations with billionaires. And in Australia, multiple independent podcasts, newsletters, and Instagram accounts have grown sizeable audiences due to a perception that mainstream media has failed to accurately cover Israel’s conduct in Gaza since October 2023, which a UN human rights commission has described as a genocide.
More recently, however, governments have begun strategically legitimizing newsfluencers as news sources. In the 2025 Australian federal election, the leaders of both major parties made appearances on lifestyle and sporting podcasts in a bid to reach young people and make themselves look more “authentic.” In the same year, the Australian government also invited youth podcasters, lifestyle influencers, and financial advice Instagrammers into Parliament to cover the federal budget announcement—which raised eyebrows among traditional journalists. In 2024, the UK Labour Party employed a similar strategy during its election campaign. In 2021, the Biden administration employed TikTok creators to promote the COVID-19 vaccine to hard-to-reach demographics.
The second Trump administration’s strategic engagement with newsfluencers has been especially active. In an attempt to ensure more favorable coverage, the administration has been including far-right newsfluencers in White House and Pentagon press pools. The administration has also used newsfluencers to legitimize its campaigns against political opposition. In a recent White House roundtable on “Antifa,” for example, the Trump administration invited far-right newsfluencers to speak on the “threat” of left-wing violence. “Antifa” is a loosely connected movement whose activists oppose the Trump government, agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and other non-government far-right groups. This specter of apparent “left-wing violence” pales in comparison to the violence carried out by far-right actors in the US, yet the Trump administration has framed these newsfluencers as “truth tellers” reporting on a topic neglected by an ostensibly biased mainstream media. Podcasters now even have high-ranking positions in the federal government. Current Director of the FBI Kash Patel, for instance, hosted and was a regular guest on various podcasts prior to his appointment in 2025, and even briefly guest hosted former Trump strategist Steve Bannon’s podcast, War Room.
How is the news industry responding?
The news industry has not been idle—on the contrary, it has spent the past two decades responding to these challenges and crises. Many media companies spent the early years of social media attempting to create algorithm-friendly content, and then pivoted to video in the late 2010s, albeit with poor results. Journalists from established media have also long been a fixture of social media, as many were early adopters of Twitter. The same is true with podcasts: the New York Times’ daily podcast The Daily, for instance, began almost a decade ago, in 2017.
The anxieties and frustrations that newsfluencers tap into—the feeling that the media is not representing them, that it is too “elite,” that they aren’t covering the stories they care about—may only be addressed by shifts in reporting and, at times, journalistic norms.
News organizations have also been responding to the rise of newsfluencers. This includes producing conversational, explainer content on TikTok and Instagram, of which the Washington Post’s TikTok account has been especially successful. Other news organizations, such as ABC News in Australia, have also increasingly adopted more kinds of informal, lo-fi, and behind-the-scenes news content seemingly in an attempt to emulate the accessible “authentic” style associated with newsfluencers. News organizations have also permitted individual journalists to build strong profiles on Instagram and TikTok. The BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire and CNN’s Max Foster are two significant examples of such “journalist influencers,” who provide almost daily news updates to their followers in this style.
The news industry can address the rise of newsfluencers in other ways as well. For instance, while it is important that media elites are literate in the styles, formats, and genres that newsfluencers produce, building trust with audiences needs to go beyond aesthetics and accessibility. The anxieties and frustrations that newsfluencers tap into—the feeling that the media is not representing them, that it is too “elite,” that they aren’t covering the stories they care about—may only be addressed by shifts in reporting and, at times, journalistic norms. For instance, while “objectivity” and “balance” can ensure commitments to accuracy and fairness in reporting, when applied clumsily it can also mischaracterize issues, such as war crimes in Gaza and climate change. The news industry can learn from newsfluencers’ critique of “objectivity,” while still maintaining principles around truthful and accurate reporting.
What opportunities do newsfluencers bring?
Newsfluencers are not simply problems to be solved. They also bring opportunities for a more diverse and rigorous media sphere. It is important that there are more kinds of people producing news in innovative formats. If the functions of journalism are being fulfilled—if there is accurate reporting that informs and helps people make sense of the world they live in while holding power to account—then exactly “who” performs those functions should be less important.
And yet, precisely because newsfluencers embody an ambivalent identity and have emerged in the context of convergent social, economic, and political crises, they remain an ambivalent phenomenon. The largely unregulated space that newsfluencers occupy produces both “real” citizen journalists as well as grifters. It enables a legitimate alternative media alongside partisans posing as such. And while being independent from newsrooms does permit more freedom, being free from newsroom codes of conduct can also enable unprofessional behavior. Being independent of news organizations also brings additional challenges, like a lack of legal support in the face of harassment from individuals, corporations, and states.
It may be preferable for governments and the news industry to support and engage with a healthy newsfluencer ecology, rather than trying to fight it.
Returning to an earlier era of news is not possible or entirely desirable, considering the various problems that the industry has experienced. Instead, it may be preferable for governments and the news industry to support and engage with a healthy newsfluencer ecology, rather than trying to fight it or selectively boost individual newsfluencers for strategic political purposes.
Edward Hurcombe is a Senior Lecturer and Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow in the School of Media and Communication, RMIT University, Australia. Edward researches how news and journalistic practice are transforming in relation to the technologies, economies, and user cultures of social media platforms. He is interested in both the challenges and possibilities emerging from these transformations: from tackling malicious actors on platforms, to locating new kinds of socially-positive digital journalism.
