别担心，我们不会让你受另一个微不足道的卡玛拉·哈里斯·莱德的影响。
自从乔·拜登总统宣布退出总统竞选以来，如果你在社交媒体上呆过一会儿，很可能你已经看到了一七个关于副总统的帖子。从滑稽可笑的黄绿色绿色迷因，到两三岁病毒剪辑和新鲜的原声片段从她的前几次集会开始，哈里斯在过去一周半的时间里在社交媒体上赢得了大量的提及。
哈里斯竞选团队欣然接受了这种热情，对迷因和玩自己的社交媒体。但是迷因和提及会转化成选举中最重要的东西吗——美元和选票?从许多方面来看，网络参与的浪潮表明了哈里斯竞选团队的一个关键战略:将她定位为这场竞选中年轻、有趣的候选人吸引年轻选民的支持。虽然这一切看起来都很愚蠢和琐碎，但这些模因标志着一些关键人口统计数据的真正支持，从许多指标来看，它们似乎对哈里斯竞选活动的启动做出了积极贡献。
“这不仅仅是一个有趣的迷因，”28岁的Etsy店主Shayla Cava说，她开始销售哈里斯“乳臭未干”t恤—把她绑在热门专辑来自歌手Charli xcx——在副总统宣布参选后。“就连专辑插图本身也是一种反主流文化的声明，表明音乐产业认为女性身体是自己的权利。所以我认为它确实非常有助于卡玛拉的竞选。正因为如此，这不仅仅是巧合，你知道;我认为这实际上符合她的很多想法。”
那么副总统在网上受到了多少关注呢?很难说，确切地说，但至少在X上，即前身为Twitter的社交媒体平台上，提到哈里斯的帖子数量激增。拜登下台后，哈里斯的提及率不仅超过了前总统唐纳德·特朗普的提及率，还超过了拜登作为积极候选人时的提及率。根据Itai Himelboim收集的数据他是佐治亚大学社交媒体参与和评估小组的负责人。
从6月1日到7月20日，哈里斯平均每天在X上被提及不到74000次。但拜登一让位，在7月21日至31日期间，X上提到她的帖子数量就激增至平均每天170多万条。相比之下，这甚至超过了拜登在辩论和退出(包括在内)期间平均每天120万次的提及，因为他面临着对其精神健康状况的严格审查。
更重要的是，在拜登退出竞选后的大约一周时间里，哈里斯在X上的被提及次数甚至超过了特朗普——鉴于前总统是X最热门的话题之一，这是一个令人印象深刻的壮举。在这场辩论将新闻周期推向高潮之前，特朗普平均每天比拜登多被提及约20万次。
个别帖子，尤其是包含哈里斯迷因的帖子，有时也有很大的影响一些病毒帖子被观看几百万次。甚至一些共和党人的帖子试图取笑副总统无意中被拥抱作为纪念她的大量迷因的一部分。
鉴于迷因的多样性，很难设计一个能够捕捉其数量的搜索。但是，看看在候选人的名字中提到“椰子”这个词的帖子的数量，就能感觉到哈里斯笑话的数量是如何激增的。(椰子贴参考a病毒视频副总统回忆起她母亲问她，“你觉得你是从椰子树上掉下来的吗?”)
椰子笑话指数在7月初飙升，当时拜登在辩论中的糟糕表现引发了人们对哈里斯总统候选人资格的关注，并在7月的第二周再次飙升。尽管如此，在拜登退出之前，X用户每天只开大约700个椰子玩笑，在那之后，他们在一天内激增到超过10，000个。尽管自那以后热带迷因已经减少，但它们仍然比拜登退出前明显更常见。
哈里斯的快速反应竞选账户(之前是拜登竞选的账户)自从拜登退出后，关注者也大幅增加社交媒体分析公司Social Blade。截至8月7日，其粉丝数量已经从拜登退出前一周的大约40万增加到了三倍，超过了120万。
哈里斯新发现的社交媒体实力可能是对特朗普长期以来获得“免费媒体”的天赋的第一次真正挑战。免费媒体是指通过你的行动和声明而不是付费广告获得的媒体报道。特朗普在成为政治家之前是一名艺人，他在2016年拥挤的共和党初选中脱颖而出，以占用房间里的所有氧气为职业通过在媒体上控制他的对手.
“社交媒体渴望真实性，”锡拉丘兹大学研究社交媒体的信息研究教授詹妮弗·斯特罗姆-格里说。“这就是为什么特朗普在2016年的第一次竞选中在推特上表现如此出色，并提高了知名度，因为他知道如何用自己的声音和真实的自己真正有效地与人交谈。"
斯特罗姆-格里说，哈里斯的模因也有类似的味道，包括副总统的笑声、舞蹈动作和即兴引用，这些都证明了一种真实性。如果哈里斯能够赶上特朗普，或者在他自己的比赛中击败他，这可能对拜登退出以来紧张的竞选产生重大影响。
虽然我们不能把下面的情况仅仅归因于椰子树迷因，但围绕哈里斯的数字对话无疑促成了她的民调数字和筹款的激增。在她总统竞选的第一周，哈里斯带来了超过2亿美元的捐款这些捐赠的很大一部分是通过数字化组织的。急速呼叫组织黑人女性选民筹集了150万美元三小时后。一个在X上被称为“哈里斯的白人”的筹款活动筹集了400多万美元在被X老板埃隆·马斯克暂时停职之前.
虽然影响很小，研究表明，强大的社交媒体存在可以转化为更多的竞选捐款。“我一直在观察Instagram、Messenger和X上出现的各种群体，他们是自我组织的，”斯特罗姆-格里说。“真的，自从(前总统巴拉克奥巴马)以来，我还没有见过这种情况。”
与此同时，民调显示哈里斯比拜登更好地对抗特朗普自从她参加总统竞选以来，她也明显变得不那么不受欢迎了。7月20日，哈里斯的平均净支持率(她的平均有利评分减去平均不利评分)为-16.0个百分点，但截至8月7日东部时间上午11点，仅为-5.8个百分点。
她在年轻选民中的表现甚至更好。在5月5日至7月16日提供年龄细分的民意调查中，哈里斯在18至29岁人群中的平均净支持率为-12.0点。自7月22日(拜登退出的第二天)以来的民调显示，她在这群人中的平均净支持率为+2.7点。相比之下，拜登在退出竞选之前，在18至29岁的人群中的平均净支持率为-24.2点。
同样，我们不能将这一运动仅仅归因于朗朗上口的TikToks的泛滥，但假设社交媒体没有发挥作用是愚蠢的。大约一半的美国成年人表示，他们经常在社交媒体上阅读新闻，其中三分之一的30岁以下成年人表示，他们经常从抖音获取新闻皮尤研究中心去年的民意调查显示.
宾夕法尼亚大学(University of Pennsylvania)市场营销和经济学教授皮纳尔·耶尔德勒姆(Pinar Yildirim)说，“倾向于投票给民主党的人的人口统计数据往往倾向于年轻人，所以他们需要特别吸引年轻观众，这些观众很难通过传统媒体接触到。”。
所有这些都表明，互联网将哈里斯作为一个可记忆的人物，有助于在民主党基础和一些关键人口统计数据中建立兴奋感，如年轻选民。但这需要的不仅仅是流行歌星的神秘代言为了赢得这次选举，你可以期待看到哈里斯和她的竞选团队在电视广告和巡回演讲方面采取更加传统的方式。归根结底，2024年的选举不会在网上赢得，而是在投票箱里。
Can Harris ride memes all the way to the White House?
Don't worry, we will not be subjecting you to another punny Kamala Harris lede.
If you've spent even a few moments on social media since President Joe Biden announced he would drop out of the presidential race, odds are you've already seen a post or seven about the vice president. Fromgleefully zany chartreuse-green memes, to two- or three-year-oldviral clipsandfresh soundbitesfrom her first few rallies, Harris has earned a flood of mentions on social media in the past week and a half.
The Harris campaign has embraced the enthusiasm, winking at the memes andgetting playful with its own social media presence. But do memes and mentions translate to what matters most in an election — dollars and votes? In many ways, the wave of online engagement is indicative of a key strategy for the Harris campaign: positioning her as the young, fun candidate in this race andattracting the support of younger voters. While it may all seem silly and trivial, these memes signal genuine support from some key demographics, and by many metrics, they seem to be contributing positively to the Harris campaign's launch.
"It's a little more than just being like a fun meme," said Shayla Cava, a 28-year-old Etsy shop owner who started sellingHarris "brat" T-shirts— tying her to thehit albumfrom singer Charli xcx — after the vice president announced her run. "Even the album artwork itself is kind of this counterculture statement on the music industry feeling entitled to women's bodies. So I think it actually does lend itself really well to Kamala's campaign. Because of that, it's not just a coincidence, you know; I think it actually aligns with a lot of her ideas."
So just how much attention has the vice president been getting online? It's tough to say, exactly, but at least on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, the number of posts mentioning Harris has surged. After Biden stepped aside, not only did mentions of Harris overtake the number of posts mentioning former President Donald Trump, but they also exceeded the number of posts mentioning Biden when he was an active candidate,according to data collected by Itai Himelboim, who directs the University of Georgia's Social Media Engagement and Evaluation Suite.
From June 1 through July 20, Harris averaged fewer than 74,000 mentions on X each day. But as soon as Biden stepped aside, the number of posts mentioning her on X exploded to an average of more than 1.7 million per day between July 21 and 31. For comparison, that's even more than the 1.2 million mentions per day that Biden averaged between the debate and his withdrawal (inclusive) as he faced intense scrutiny over his mental fitness for office.
What's more, Harris was mentioned on X even more than Trump every day for about a week after Biden dropped out of the race — an impressive feat given that the former president is one of X's hottest topics. Before the debate kicked the news cycle into high gear, Trump was averaging around 200,000 more mentions per day than Biden.
Individual posts, particularly ones that included Harris memes, also sometimes had a significant reach, withsome viral postsbeing viewedmillions of times. Even some posts from Republicans attempting to poke fun at the vice presidentinadvertently became embracedas part of the deluge of memes celebrating her.
Given the diversity of the memes, it's hard to design a search that can capture their volume. But a look at the number of posts mentioning the word "coconut" in conjunction with the candidates' names offers a sense of how the number of Harris jokes has surged. (The coconut posts reference aviral videoin which the vice president reminisces about her mother asking her, "You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?")
The coconut joke index spikes at the start of July, when buzz first built around a Harris presidential candidacy in the wake of Biden's terrible performance in the debate, and again in the second week of July. Still, X users made only about 700 coconut jokes per day before Biden's withdrawal, after which they exploded to a high of more than 10,000 in a single day. Though the tropical memes have fallen off since, they remain significantly more common than before Biden withdrew.
Harris's rapid response campaign account (which was previously the Biden campaign's account) has also seen a huge increase in followers since Biden's withdrawal, according tosocial media analytics company Social Blade. Its following has tripled from roughly 400,000 the week before Biden dropped out to more than 1.2 million as of Aug. 7.
Harris's newfound social media strength represents perhaps the first real challenge to Trump's longstanding talent for getting "earned media" — media coverage gained by virtue of your actions and statements rather than paid-for advertising. An entertainer before he was a politician, Trump has made a career out of taking up all the oxygen in the room, emerging from a crowded Republican primary in 2016by dominating his opponents in earned media.
"Social media craves authenticity," said Jennifer Stromer-Galley, an information studies professor at Syracuse University who researches social media. "That's why Trump has done so well with Twitter and growing that visibility during his first campaign in '16, because he understood how to really effectively talk to people in his own voice, with his own authentic self."
Stromer-Galley said the memes of Harris have a similar flavor, embracing the vice president's laugh, dance moves and offhand quotes that demonstrate a kind of authenticity. If Harris can match Trump, or beat him at his own game, it could have significant implications for a race that has tightened since Biden dropped out.
And while we can't attribute the following solely to coconut tree memes, the digital conversation around Harris has undoubtedly contributed to a surge in her poll numbers and fundraising. In the first week of her presidential campaign, Harrisbrought in more than $200 million in donations, and a significant portion of those donations have come through digital organizing. A Zoom callorganizing Black women voters raised $1.5 millionin three hours. A fundraiser dubbed "White Dudes for Harris" on X raised more than $4 millionbefore being temporarily suspended by X owner Elon Musk.
And though the effect is small,research has shown that a strong social media presence can translateinto greater campaign donations. "I've been watching all kinds of groups cropping up on Instagram, on Messenger, on X, and they're self-organized," Stromer-Galley said. "I haven't seen that, really, since [former President Barack] Obama."
Polling, meanwhile, showsHarris doing better than Biden against Trump, and she's also gotten significantly less unpopular since her entrée into the presidential race. On July 20, Harris'saverage net favorability rating(her average favorable rating minus her average unfavorable rating) was -16.0 percentage points, but as of 11 a.m. Eastern on Aug. 7, it's just -5.8 points.
And she's doing even better with younger voters. In polls from May 5 through July 16 that provided breakdowns by age, Harris's average net favorability rating among 18- to 29-year-olds was -12.0 points. In polls since July 22 (the day after Biden dropped out), her average net favorability among this cohort is +2.7 points. Compare this to Biden, whose average net favorability rating was -24.2 points among 18- to 29-year-olds before he dropped out.
Again, we can't attribute this movement solely to a deluge of catchy TikToks, but it would be foolish to assume social media isn't playing a role. About half of American adults say they regularly consume news on social media, including a third of adults under 30 who say they regularly get news from TikTok, according topolling from Pew Research Center last year.
"The demographics of the people who tend to vote for the Democratic Party tend to skew younger, so they need to attract, in particular, the younger audiences, which are much harder to reach through traditional media," said Pinar Yildirim, a marketing and economics professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
All of this suggests the internet's embrace of Harris as a memeable figure are helping build excitement among the Democratic base and some key demographics, like young voters. But it will take a lot more than acryptic endorsement from a pop starto win this election, and you can expect to see Harris and her campaign take a much more traditional approach to messaging when it comes to TV ads and stump speeches. At the end of the day, the 2024 election won't be won online, but at the ballot box.
