Social media influencers and politics

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0:33Adline Okere:Are you really buying a car online on AutoTrader right now?

0:36Famega Syavira:Really? I can get super specific with dealer listings and see cars based on my budget. You can really have it delivered. Or pick it up.

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0:46Famega Syavira:AutoTrader. Buy your car online. Really?

0:50Adline Okere:Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

1:10Adline Okere:This is The Fifth Floor, at the heart of global storytelling, with BBC journalists from all around the world. I'm your host, Farnak Amidi.

1:25Adline Okere:These are the times of social media and social media influencers. From gaming and fashion to food, travel and culture, influencers are doing what they are known for, influencing and creating trends. The most successful ones have millions of followers. So maybe it's no surprise that political parties globally have started getting them on board to amplify their messages to people who are turned off by traditional media, and in some cases, even putting them on the government payroll. It's a global trend. So to find out more about it, we've brought together our colleagues from around the world. Famega Siavera is head of social media for BBC Indonesia.

2:06Adline Okere:Adeline O 'Kere is Ibo news editor in Lagos, Nigeria. And Luis Fajardo is with BBC Monitoring based in Miami and covering the Spanish-speaking news across Latin America. So before we get into the whole thing, just I want to get a sense of how important influencers and social media is in the part of the world that you are from. I'll start with you, Famika.

2:33Famega Syavira:Yeah, nowadays, I think trust to news in Indonesia is decreasing. And most people in Indonesia get their news from social media and they follow the opinion of social media influencer, which not like media. They might have bias and not independent. And they even Google in TikTok, if that makes sense. Adeline? Social media influencers are the new social teachers of norms and trends. And they kind of are very important in Nigeria in shaping what's going on and how young people should now interact with themselves and what lifestyle should be. Luis?

3:12Luis Fajardo:Well, what my colleagues say sounds exactly what it's like in Latin America as well. I'm originally from Colombia and there's studies that show that now a majority of people get, for example, their political information from their social media feeds. So it's absolutely crucial.

3:29Adline Okere:And Luis, you actually wrote a piece for BBC Monitoring about this whole issue. What got you started on this topic?

3:38Luis Fajardo:Well, Farhanak, the thing is that in Latin America, we're used to a certain style in government media channels like in state TV. And these are places where typically, you know, you hear the national anthem being played a lot and presidents giving a lot of speeches, which are sometimes seen as stodgy, you know. and it's easy for people to dismiss this as straightforward propaganda. But now you have influencers who have a reputation for being cool, for being popular, for being independent. And in some cases, they're aligning with politicians. So you might be following your favorite TikToker because you think he or she is cool.

4:13Luis Fajardo:But at the same time, you're being sent political messages and they are powerful and that got me thinking.

4:18Adline Okere:So Luis, in your article, you talked about two countries in detail. One is Colombia, where you're from. and has a very left-wing president, Gustavo Petro, and Argentina, which has the conservative president, Javier Millet, who is also a social media phenomenon himself. But both have been paying influencers to promote their messages. Is that right?

4:40Luis Fajardo:Certainly. And that goes to show that it's not a trend associated with one political party. Everyone, all political forces are discovering it's very important. In Colombia, there's been a lot of controversy because of the Petro administration in Colombia is giving government contracts to some of the top influencers in exchange for favorable coverage of government initiatives. And people start saying if this is not a new form of state media, because it's, of course, being paid directly by the government. But there's also been attention to the situation in Argentina, where there's something people call there the forces of heaven, an online army of social media supporters of Javier Milei.

5:21Luis Fajardo:In recent reports, there have been stories about some of the most prominent members are also being paid directly by the government. Very controversial as well, because a lot of his reputation is based on criticizing the size of the government and saying he needs to use a chainsaw to cut down government spending. And some of these social media influencers are repeating this message while they are, in fact, in the government payroll. So a lot of controversy over this.

5:45Adline Okere:Very interesting. And in the article, you also give examples of some of the influencers who are not necessarily political. They create content about other things like food, lifestyle and fashion, but they do become political at times. And one of them is a young woman. Her handle is They Call Me Mar, but she's also become very politically powerful. Tell me about her. What is her story?

6:12Luis Fajardo:Yes, that's another very good example of how so-called lifestyle influencers were not directly about politics, but they also sometimes intervene in politics and they're very influential. Now, this young woman's audience reaches nearly 1.3 million followers, which is more than most of the Colombian traditional mainstream media outlets. It's very, very big. She was a law student who calls herself an activist and a feminist, and she started her media career doing dances. doing lip syncing acts in TikTok. But now, Mélicien Mar is a powerful voice in Colombian politics. For example, presidential candidates give her exclusive interviews because they know that even though her main focus is not political, when she does get involved in politics, when she does talk about politics, there's more than a million people listening to what she says, and it's very influential.

7:05Adline Okere:And does she also get paid by these politicians?

7:08Luis Fajardo:Well, in the specific case of Mélicien Mar, That's not clear. But one of the controversies that has been going on in Colombia as well is that there was a recent report by a public opinion poster called Cifras y Conceptos that said approximately 400 influencers in the country, like large scale influencers, are posting about politics. And according to these media reports by big news sites like El Espectador, 18 of these influencers had been given government contracts by the Petro administration, by the government. And one of them, a pro-government influencer who is known as Lalis Smile, her name is Laura Beltran Palomares, according to this report, she was getting approximately$2 ,500 per month, which is seen as not an insignificant amount of money in Colombia.

7:53Luis Fajardo:And of course, that fuels the controversy about how independent these influencers really are.

7:59Adline Okere:And Famigal, let's now come to Indonesia. How influential are influencers in politics over there?

8:07Famega Syavira:Yeah, I think it's a similar trend with what Luis already told us. In Indonesia, there's a lot of government money was spent to fund the social media influencer. We call them buzzers. And it was known that they amplify the issues that are used by politicians. And we had our election last year, and influencers had a huge role in it.

8:28Adline Okere:And can you give us some examples of the kind of influencers who were involved in the elections last year? Buzzers, as you call them.

8:37Famega Syavira:Yeah, there is this one guy. He used to be an actor who has 76 million followers in Instagram. His name is Rafi Ahmad. Then he found this production house for YouTubers and influencers. And then he was endorsing the now president in his social media and appear in his campaign. And then the president, after he was elected, he promoted Rafi Ahmad to be official government position as the president's special envoy for the development of the young generation and artists. not the same like minister, but get like a huge amount of money and salary and get a house and get like similar facilities like minister.

9:18Adline Okere:Just like Luis mentioned, some of the influencers in Latin America are getting paid. And you mentioned they have some unofficial maybe positions in the government. But do we know that these influencers are being paid by politicians in Indonesia as well? And if so, do we know how much?

9:35Famega Syavira:Yeah, there is this one guy, he confessed that he was paid around 150 million rupiah, which is around 7 ,000 pounds. And also, we wrote a report about how many budget that was paid by the government to pay influencers. The army allegedly spent around 100 billion rupiah for influencers.

10:06Adline Okere:100 billion rupiah is about around 4 million pounds. But they deny this. Adeline, thank you for waiting so patiently in Lagos for your turn. You know, I know that social media is huge in Nigeria. So are influencers as important in politics there as well? Yes, they are.

10:31Famega Syavira:And as you would know, Nigeria has, you know, a young population that some of them are getting introduced into politics. And so influencers are super important to shaping the narrative of these young people. Some of them started, you know, activism. Some of them started out with lifestyle and then branched into politics. We see a lot of those influences when it comes to social justice systems. I would say for one that influencers have played a great role in demanding for justice in Nigeria when it comes to when human rights are trampled upon. They kind of lend a voice to it. Perhaps that's a hashtag.

11:22Famega Syavira:And before you know what's happening, a policy is revoked. Someone has been arrested. We've seen it multiple times.

11:29Adline Okere:Do we know that they are being paid by politicians and political parties for amplifying their messages, just like in Indonesia and Latin America?

11:39Famega Syavira:To be honest with you, there are no official claims to it. But people have come out to say, oh, I know that such a person received this amount of money. But you know, largely in sub-Saharan Africa, a lot of things are shrouded under secrecy. And so people don't come out to declare their incomes in that level. But you would see a whole lot of people coming out who were just lifestyle. Maybe they were cooks and they loved fashion or dance. And next thing you know, they're going with a particular political party. One classic example is a musician, Banky Wellington, popularly known as Banky W, who was a musician.

12:18Famega Syavira:People loved him. He had a huge followership on many social media platforms. And before we knew what was happening, he came out as a contestant in one of the political parties. PDP is a major opposition in Nigeria today. I mean, it was a shock for a lot of people. It trended at the time. You know, there's so many of them that way who, you know, were into one thing or the other and then switched into politics.

12:44Adline Okere:And Famika, in Indonesia, you've been experiencing some violent protests against the government. And two of the very well-known influencers that used to support the president have come out and apologized for their support of the current president. Can you tell us about them a little?

13:02Famega Syavira:And why are they sorry? A little bit of background. So after the president elected, Indonesia had high hopes. But then some problems started to appear and people questioned his policy. So there's like the poverty is rising, unemployment is increasing. And then in the end of August, all parliament members were getting a house allowance, like 10 times the minimum wage. So we have huge protests and then it escalated after a taxi driver was crossed by a police vehicle. While he's not joining the protest, he's just making a delivery. I think around 10 other people have died in this protest. And also the protest is widely organized in social media.

13:46Famega Syavira:People in social media was like really talking about the injustice. And then they also make boycott lists of influencers. Because now people are getting smarter. Like they understand who's the influencer and who have real unbiased opinion. And then after that, there is these two girls like Aukarin and Rachel Fenya. They were famous because of like lifestyle content. And they went online to apologize that they were choosing this president in this last year election. Both of them voicing their regret and then speaking up in social media. And this is a trend that followed by some other people also.

14:28Adline Okere:And Luis, back to Latin America, is there a pushback against these influencers who are selling their services to politicians?

14:37Luis Fajardo:certainly there's a big controversy of course the influencers defend their position they say they're engaging in like perfectly legal contracts with with the state in some cases i mean there is no implication that this is illegal the contracts are publicly known but there is a question of optics because in many cases these people emerge as independent figures on their own and part of their appeal is to be an independent, a fresh position, as they would say. And they get criticized a lot. There's even an insult against them, the people who don't like what they say in their social media feeds. They call them bodegueros, which in Spanish, a very rough translation is a worker in a troll farm, because the implication is that they are now part of a troll farm for whichever political movement is paying for them.