How will your favorite bloggers sell politicians in the election?

When political players fully enter the market of influence marketing, the income of bloggers will increase many times, if not tens or hundreds of times. However, we may never see this in the reports of candidates and parties.

This is a problem of integrity not only of Ukrainian politicians and opinion leaders. A similar situation occurred in Europe, as well as in the countries of Asia, America and even Africa. And until someone figures out how to regulate it, your favorite bloggers won’t be selling you cosmetics next time, but politicians.

Advertising:

The influence industry Imagine you are a politician. Maybe a young candidate who is just starting out, or an experienced figure with years of experience behind him and his own party. The only task before you is to tell potential voters about yourself and convince them that you are the best choice. what will you do

You will probably start an advertising campaign. But what to use — television, billboards, street tents? Social networks do not immediately come to mind. However, they can also be used in different ways. For example, running targeted advertising is not a new and election-tested method.

But there is only one problem — data on advertising costs on Facebook and Instagram are publicly available, it will be difficult to hide budgets, and it is generally forbidden to conduct political campaigns on TikTok. In addition, such advertising is unlikely to reach voters abroad, because the European Union, for example, has rather strict regulations.

However, there is another way, because advertising can be bought directly from bloggers. This approach is already actively used by businesses, and only last year the market of influence marketing grew up by 75%. There are many advantages – bloggers are trusted, it is difficult to track such expenses and, in general, it is difficult to understand whether it is advertising or just the political position of a particular person.

As long as a full-scale war continues in Ukraine, and it is impossible to hold elections, it is difficult to see the real scale of changes in approaches to political advertising. One of the most striking examples was advertising in Telegram channels, where politicians regularly buy posts, including with budget funds, such as, for example, the city government of Dnipro.

Political technologies in the world do not stand still. In recent years, elections in completely different regions have seen a surge in political activity precisely because of the use of influencers on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. The trend has become particularly noticeable since 2020.

Back then, the headquarters were open during the elections in the USA cooperated with microbloggers for campaigning voters. Entire networks of small accounts (10k followers) were found to be operating as an organized network. The posts looked like the personal position of the bloggers, which caused more credibility, but often the latter received hidden payment for advertising./>pan>

Over the past five years, the trend has only gained momentum. Last year’s elections in Romania were illustrative. Little-known far-right candidate Celin Giorgescu, who had no official headquarters or budget, suddenly went viral thanks to hundreds of influencers who published videos with the slogan “Stability and Integrity”.

Later it turned out that these posts were paid for through the FameUp platform, and the comments under them massively generated thousands of bots, promoting the name of Georgescu. The investigation is ongoing, and this case became the first example in Europe when elections were actually disrupted due to manipulation in social networks.

Campaign in support of Georgescu on TikTok

Source: The Loop

Interestingly, it was the Romanian diaspora that became one of Georgescu’s targets. While people living abroad for a long time have traditionally tended to support pro-European candidates, the far right has been able to use social media to change that.

Georgescu actively used “patriotic” rhetoric, and a network of bloggers helped make the campaign viral. In addition, the algorithms of social networks only contributed to this – voters found themselves in an information bubble on platforms that long ago became for them the main source of information about life in their native country.

Sincere support vs “gray” schemes Politicians and governments use different models of cooperation with bloggers and opinion leaders. One of them is the official involvement of influencers in the campaign on a transparent basis. In this case, expenses are reported, and advertising is marked accordingly.

At the same time, “gray” schemes and hidden advertising are popular, as in the elections in Romania. Unlike official advertising, such cooperation is not declared: an influencer can publish an allegedly personal opinion without indicating that it is part of a campaign. This creates the illusion of spontaneous support, so this approach is very effective for attracting potential voters.

Cooperation can also be based simply on common views. Bloggers can sincerely support a certain political force or just an ideology, sometimes so much so that they actually become full-fledged agitators on social networks.

A vivid example of all three strategies of using bloggers and social networks was last year’s election campaign in the USA. There, political committees not only directly paid bloggers for posts, but also used agencies for this, or even simply invited influencers to events and gave them merch.

Bloggers’ posts on screen during the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago

Source: The Washington Post (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)

At the same time, a new format of cooperation appeared – payment “per action”, which is calculated not for content as such, but for the number of people who managed to attract voters to register or sign petitions.

Approaches to the regulation of political campaigning on the Internet differ significantly from country to country.

The European logic, for example, is preventive: with the Digital Services Act (DSA), they oblige platforms to disclose data about political content and introduce sanctions for non-compliance with these norms. At the same time, the EU actually regulates not the content of advertising campaigns, but the transparency of their financing.

Is it worth thinking about it in the Ukrainian context, even if there is no prospect of holding elections in the near future? This question is answered by Ukrainian politicians themselves, who are actively launching campaigns on social networks. They are only from the beginning of 2025 spent it is more than $75 thousand dollars, and this figure does not take into account advertising, for example, in Telegram.

Making the system completely transparent is unlikely to succeed. However, in the presence of legislation that corresponds to reality, the effectiveness of control bodies and the readiness of civil society to monitor campaigns, the Ukrainian politics has a chance to be more virtuous.

Victoria Maksimova

A column is a type of material that reflects exclusively the point of view of the author. It does not claim objectivity and comprehensive coverage of the topic in question. The point of view of the editors of “Economic Pravda” and “Ukrainian Pravda” may not coincide with the author’s point of view. The editors are not responsible for the reliability and interpretation of the given information and perform exclusively the role of a carrier.