Date of Completion

5-6-2025

Degree Type

Honors Thesis

Discipline

Political Science (POLS)

Abstract

Following the announcement of her 2024 presidential candidacy, Kamala Harris’s team unveiled a neon green header with the word ‘kamala’ displayed in stretched black Arial font on her X account, a reference to the popular summer album ‘brat’ by English singer Charli xcx and the subsequent popular culture trend inspired by the album. As social media becomes increasingly more utilized for political campaigns in the United States, social media trends have become more relevant in reaching voters, especially young ones. Inspired by the publicity following Harris’s use of cultural trends as well as continual research finding connections between voter activity and social media use in young people (Onyechi, 2018; Hermida et al., 2012; Santhiveeran & Orr, 2023; Bene, 2017a), this study investigates the effect of utilizing social media trends in political campaigns on the favorability of candidates for young voters in the United States.

Through a survey experiment with 747 respondents, all aged 18-29 years old, this study finds that utilizing social media trends in political campaigns has the potential to significantly hurt the favorability of political candidates. Respondents who viewed a campaign social media graphic for a fictional candidate that utilized the brat trend rated the fictional political candidate significantly less favorably than respondents who viewed a campaign social media graphic that did not utilize a social media trend. These findings have major implications for young voter behavior and reveal an unexpected break from patterns of previous research. Additionally, this study illuminates the importance of how politicians use social media and highlights the potential repercussions of social media-heavy political campaigns. While utilizing social media can help politicians reach new audiences and engage with young voters, participating in social media trends can have consequences on their campaigns and their favorability with young voters.

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