Senator Kendall Jenner?

The election of non-politicians is of great interest among the high stakes and many results that these EU elections were linked to. I mostly refer to the instances where celebrities have gotten elected using their TV reputation. Every major party in Greece had celebrity candidates with varying degrees of success.

What all these candidates had in common was their great relationship with television. Its importance is now underestimated due to its comparison to social media, which is a miscalculation. Giorgos Aftias, the most-voted candidate in these elections, is a TV presenter without any social media presence. This is a testament to the medium’s ability to influence people, more specifically older people, since both the medium’s and the candidate’s target group is the older generation.  

However, in Cyprus we got to see the other side of the coin. Fidias is a social media celebrity/influencer who beat all but the top 2 parties and managed to get elected as an independent. He gave us a glimpse to the future of politics: the new arena is social media. However, we still are in a state of transition: on the one hand we are watching candidates on morning TV talk shows and on the other hand, we watch them on TikTok.

For now, TV wins, and the reason is simple: older people vote in bigger numbers than younger generations and as we established they get their news from TV. Thus, since recognizability leads to electoral success, as time goes by, social media fame will be the way to win elections. We will witness the passing of the torch from the TV celebrities to the influencers.

The result is equivocal. On the one hand, influencers can bring young people to the ballots (as Fidias did), showing how influential the platforms are for the younger generation. On the other hand, it leads to people with no experience of how politics works (because it too requires experience, as with anything in life) and they usually have a public persona that lacks the seriousness that political office requires (talk shows and pranks are no sign of seriousness). These, however, are considered anti-systemic virtues; but they are not.

So where does this lead us? Will Kendall Jenner become a senator? That is something we can no longer reject outright. But, now it’s time to understand the power of media-originating recognizability and how people vote. Are the people disoriented by the media and thus are voting for celebrities? Or is it that they want to give a chance to recognizable people who are not the corrupt politicians they are used to? This will be apparent in the change that this new breed of politicians will accomplish. We have placed a bet on influencers in politics. Let’s hope it pans out. If not, let’s hope we finally elevate our political standards.