Why social media wants 'authentic' politicians

The single most prized asset for any politician in the age of social media is authenticity. To paraphrase George Burns, ‘once you can fake that, you’ve got it made’. This should be obvious, but most politicians still don’t realise it. Maybe it’s because they grew up in the TV age. They continue to campaign as if we’re still in that bygone era, and it makes a lot of them look silly, boring, fake, and duplicitous.

The TV age campaign was about two things. The first was looking good. When Nixon debated John F Kennedy in the 1960 US election, those listening on radio thought Nixon won. But pretty much everyone watching on their shiny new TVs – which over the previous decade swept into nearly every American home – thought fresh faced Kennedy trounced the sweaty, pallid Nixon. By the next morning, Kennedy was a star – and of course he went on to win the election. From that point on, telegenicism was regarded as necessary for any political hopeful.

The later advent of rolling news added the simple, repeatable and memorable sound-bite. Message discipline became everything. Politicians were terrified of saying a wrong word or phrase, in case it was jumped on by the media and opposition. This transformed a generation of clever, thoughtful public representatives into dysfunctional automatons.

TV elections: look good and say that same thing over and over.

The pinnacle – in fact the turning point – was Ed Miliband in 2011, who in real life is a funny, charming and quick-witted man. In one car-crash interview he responded to different questions with the same bot-like answer, ‘these strikes are wrong’.

Politicians evolve to fit the medium through which they reach voters. Outsiders are often the first to recognise and then exploit when something has changed. This is why a newer generation of politicians – often but not only populist right wing – became wildly popular on social media. They were seen by voters as being honest, even if they were not. Because they seemed to speak their mind, they were viewed as being authentic. And therefore trustworthy. Even if they were not.

People used to think that Barack Obama was the first ‘Facebook president’. Maybe. But the the first engagement-based algorithmic president was Donald Trump. His style of communication was far more in tune with social media from the mid 2010s on. Sharable, emotional, and above all apparently authentic. The content is not irrelevant of course, but it’s barely half the story. Which is why Trump rambling on about sharks - as he did last week - doesn’t matter. The more vague the rant, the more people feel they are getting the ‘real’ man. Not a Washington dupe.

Lots of voters say they trust Nigel Farage. I’d guess it’s not based on his record, but because he appears to simply say what he thinks. It was also true of Jeremy Corbyn, or Beppe Grillo in Italy. The first time I saw Jacob Rees-Mogg, it was on a 2015 TV show called Inside the Commons. He seemed like a quaint throwback. A procedure-obsessed oddity who looked and sounded like a 1920s London banker. But he was unapologetic about it. I immediately felt he would be popular online, because he seemed to be authentic.

This is not a left or right-wing phenomenon. It is a social media phenomenon.

This is also why a video of Margaret Thatcher refusing to take part in a ‘please do a jump’ TV stunt went viral recently. It was perfect social media content. Someone unapologetically being themselves.  

There are lots of reasons why authenticity is a prize currency in politics. But chief among them is how social media transformed the way we consume content.  

Social media creates the opportunity for politicians – for anyone – to be far more open. Simply by creating the possibility of total transparency, we come to expect more of it. (And transparency is one of those tricky words which is hard to disagree with). So anyone who doesn’t reveal more of themselves must, we think, be hiding something.

More importantly, social media has turned us all into creators. In the TV age, we were loosely aware that politicians walking in high-vis jackets wasn’t real; or the set-piece ‘getting to know’ interview was shallow and superficial. But we didn’t know how TV was made, how content was generated, how TV lighting worked, how the edit-suite ruled all, how rooms were set up to create visual effects. Pretty much every voter under the age of 45 is now a content creator. We have all created posts, reels, stories. We have edited and published photographs and videos. We know the tricks, and how online content can be manipulated. 

That has made us all far more sophisticated as audiences. When it comes to making podcasts, I’ve noticed over the last few years how much listeners want to get behind the curtain. They want to hear the presenter’s honest reflection or emotion, they want to see the blooper reel, the cock-up, the re-takes. They want to see authenticity. Notice how documentaries now nearly always include short ‘set-up’ scenes: interviewees sitting down, shuffling in their seats, having a microphone attached. We need to feel it’s real.

It makes sense we’d prize authenticity. We are surrounded with more bullshit and fakery than ever. Online there are metrics, people, ideas, videos and conversations that have no bearing whatsoever to any objective offline reality. The people are fake. The numbers are fake. There are fake reviews reviewing fake business. There are bots pretending to be human and humans pretending to be bots. In fact, most of the internet is probably a lie. In this made-up world, anyone or anything that seems to be real is likely to be wildly popular.

Of course, people – and especially politicians – try to fake authenticity. Influencers do this all the time. I have witnessed influencers take and re-take ‘authentic’ moments of reflection or surprise until they have the correct angle and lighting.  Professional social media influencers might be able to pull this off (although mostly they cannot) but politicians are incapable.

The other reason authenticity sells is because no-one really believes politicians will actually deliver the things they’ve promised anyway. Manifesto pledges are routinely ignored. Feeling like we know our elected official seems more useful than listening to promises we know they’ll break. In a strange way, it’s a return Edmund Burke’s theory of representative democracy, as explained to the electors of Bristol in 1774. Yes, constituents’ views should carry great weight, he said. But an MP should be judged on his character and judgement.

I believe politicians shouldn’t mind being caught swearing, or crying, or getting angry, or falling over, or saying ‘I don’t know’.  Maybe they’d be ripped apart in the newspapers, but the public would love them. The first time I warmed to John Prescott was when he punched someone who threw an egg at him.

Social media has changed audiences, what they expect and what they want – not just on X or Instagram or Tik-Tok, but in every medium. It’s changed culture.

Ed Davey seems to be the only one to have figured this out. Maybe he learnt this lesson the hard way. This time last year Ed was ‘drinking’ in a ‘pub’ while ‘celebrating’ England women scoring a goal during the World Cup.

Maybe I’m unfair, but that looked like fake authenticity to me: an obviously staged normality attempt, which people can easily spot. (Note: I wish just one politician would break with convention on these ‘drinking-a-pint’ photos. They should sit down, drink 4 pints in quick succession, talk nonsense, buy a kebab on the way home, then tweet a photo of themselves looking hungover the next morning. I would consider voting for such a person.)  

Maybe that episode taught Davey that faking authenticity is worse than not trying at all. Now it seems the shackles are off. Him falling off paddle-boards and whizzing down slides is universally agreed to be fantastic. He’s normal! I, too, have awkwardly fallen off a paddleboard.

On a slide: better than drinking a pint

And this is leavened with a very different tone of authenticity – speaking at home about caring for his disabled son.  

In the TV age, going down a waterslide would have been a colossal error. As it was for Neil Kinnock’s famous beach stumble. (Which is still funny for some reason.) In the social media age, I’m quite sure that would have been seen quite positively.

Neither Starmer nor Sunak seem to have quite worked this out yet. They continue to campaign as if this were the nineties – with carefully chosen words, carefully edited clips, specially designed soundbites. My heart sank when Keir Starmer said the Tory election promises were like a ‘Jeremy Corbyn manifesto’. It was so obviously a planned line of attack. I had a similar feeling during the party debates. No-one seemed real – the people replaced with cardboard cut-outs. Which is why viewers found it dull. It is also why someone like Nigel Farage is repeatedly described as ‘authentic’. This is true, but only when he is standing next to a row of politico-bots.