Think of the now-infamous Romanian election TikTok scandal in 2024, in which the far-right candidate Călin Georgescu paid over 100 influencers behind the scenes to support his campaign. Or the Hungarian network of pro-government influencers used to bring Fidesz’ political agenda to Gen Z.
Content creators vs. influencers
Political parties have long used content creators as campaigning tools to reach audiences in places where they already spend a lot of their time. As they tend to already be very familiar with social media platforms, content creators are at an advantage. But for influencers who don’t typically engage with political content, speaking with sufficient depth and nuance can be tricky, particularly when this differs from content they usually produce.
There is a practical difference between content creators and influencers, according to Roza Ismailai, the communications manager at the European Cultural Foundation. They have different audiences and messaging: “An influencer brings visibility. A creator brings legitimacy. Visibility moves numbers. Legitimacy moves behaviour,” she told The European Correspondent.
In countries like Türkiye, where media freedom is restricted, content creators can provide alternative, critical voices, covering issues and perspectives that mainstream media fail to address. Following mass protests in 2025, having a political opinion on social media platforms was a form of protest.
Some EU content creators try to find a balance. “I'm trying to both simplify how the EU works and communicate it to people, but also add a spin to it that I think can provide value from the point of view of my research as a full-time researcher and academic,” Pietro Valetto, an Italian content creator covering EU affairs and PhD researcher, told TEC.
The medium is the message
Viewers' trust has now shifted from institutions to direct observations. “It’s not necessarily worse. It's more transparent. You can actually watch someone earn credibility, or lose it,” Ismailai explained.
“But audiences haven't yet adapted their scrutiny to match this change. People will fact-check a newspaper article by pure instinct. They'll watch a nine-second video and accept it at complete face value, even though the creator usually has no editorial infrastructure behind them. The literacy gap isn't about creators being untrustworthy; plenty are more rigorous than major outlets. It's that audiences are applying entirely different standards to different formats.”
Still, when trust is low between politicians, traditional media, and the public, politicians can benefit from the positive coverage they receive from content creators.
“Maybe I do have a personal opinion on some topics, but I tend to give the benefit of the doubt to each one or present both sides of an argument and really come at a topic with an academic mindset rather than just trying to support one side or the other, because I'm trying to be more informative than an activist in most cases,” Valetto said.
Giving a voice to all sides on an unchecked digital platform can be controversial. In Slovakia, podcast host Oskar Barami's popular online talk show is not a paid campaign, but he still manages to talk to politicians accross the political spectrum. The politicians on his show attract thousands of views.
Platforms need accountability
As democracy faces growing pressure around the world, weak accountability makes it easier for opaque social media campaigns to go viral and influence the political agenda without disclosing who is behind them.
“One indicator to watch for is consistent alignment in wording and timing with official party messaging. At CEE Digital Democracy Watch, we believe such collaborations should be included in a public transparency register of ‘political brand deals’. This would help distinguish paid or coordinated messaging from genuinely organic opinions,” Jakub Szymik, one of the authors of a policy paper on political influencers' effect on elections, told TEC.
While neccessary to keep track of official political campaigning, “formally labeling such collaborations may reduce the perceived authenticity of the message. Support can appear less organic and more financially motivated,” Szymik added.
Can we make it work?
Influencers and content creators are here to stay, but the world doesn’t look like it’s ready for them. We may not only need a new set of rules for digital platforms, but more critical and discerning citizens too. So what could the future look like? Ismailai paints an ideal world where journalists, content creators, influencers and institutions can work together credibly.
“Creators do translation. They take something true but genuinely dense, a 40-page policy paper, a directive, a funding mechanism, and make it legible enough so that someone actually stops scrolling and engages with it. But what matters more is that they're the ones building communities around these issues,” Ismailai said.