2026-07-25T10:00:26.992Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/25/politics/gen-z-political-influencers-money
玛丽亚·康斯托克直到18岁才有了自己的手机。到下一个生日时，她已经拥有了百万粉丝。
她发布的“观点式”视频涉及约会、政治和职场，吸引了社交媒体用户的注意，最终也引起了政治竞选团队的关注——他们认为这些视频贴近大众生活。从新冠疫情时期的业余爱好起步，如今这份爱好已经变成了一份工作。
但正如康斯托克和其他从业者所证实的那样，Z世代政治网红的工作是一门复杂且混乱的生意。
拍摄、制作和发布内容需要承担媒体高管的所有职责。客户要求严苛，行业竞争往往十分激烈，薪酬不稳定，而且你支持的政党也可能在选举中落败。
“如今人人都是内容创作者，”现年24岁的康斯托克说道，她正利用自己的数字素养为民主党助力。政治相关工作“无论是在法律层面、竞选活动中还是支付系统里，都很难界定，这是一个不断演变的全新领域，而且会越来越混乱。”
据塔夫茨大学公民学习与参与信息与研究中心的数据，今年11月将有近5000万Z世代选民具备投票资格，这两大政党都将其视为赢得选举的关键基础群体。Z世代（Gen Z）是指1997年至2012年出生的人群。
2024年，唐纳德·特朗普总统和共和党通过主导非传统媒体渠道，在年轻选民群体中取得了重大进展。此后，内容创作者和专家表示，民主党正在扩大与网红的合作，并吸引了越来越多的社交媒体红人。与此同时，共和党则在沿用已经取得成功的策略继续推进。
“不管我们喜不喜欢，网红都不会消失，他们在我们理解政治的过程中发挥着极其重要的作用，”研究数字文化的西顿霍尔大学教授杰斯·劳奇伯格说道，“我认为现在我们可以说，网红也在向我们兜售政治。”
但近十几位接受美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）采访的网红表示，投身职业政治网红行列意味着要在一个几乎没有监管、薪酬结构复杂多变且政治关系不断变化的新兴媒体行业中摸索前行。“真实性”是重中之重。是否披露薪酬——这可能会损害真实性——仍是一个有待商榷的问题。
并非所有受欢迎的政治网红都能将内容创作变成谋生手段——对一些人来说，这只是在常规职业之外的额外收入来源，或者仅仅是一项休闲活动。
对哈里·西森而言，自六年前开始发布选举相关内容以来，这份工作已经成为他的全职职业。
现年23岁的西森刚开始在社交媒体上发布视频、为时任总统乔·拜登拉票时，甚至还没有到投票年龄。
“新冠疫情期间，我和其他青少年一样待在地下室里，”他回忆道，当时一切都停摆了，“我刷着社交媒体，看到其他年轻人在谈论政治，谈论乔·拜登和唐纳德·特朗普。我当时就想，我也能做到。”
如今他在TikTok上拥有200万粉丝，民主党高层争相邀约他参与活动，他甚至引起了特朗普的注意。去年，特朗普发布了一段AI视频，画面中他将飞机上的污水倾倒在西森和其他“反君主制”集会的抗议者身上。
现在，西森醒来后的第一件事就是“立刻浏览新闻”，寻找可以发布到自己的YouTube频道、TikTok和Instagram上的素材——“全套流程都得跟上”。他的经纪公司会审核他的公开露面，和其他热门网红一样，他的个人生活也受到了严密审视。2025年3月，他被指控胁迫多名女性与他进行露骨聊天，随后接受了英国主持人皮尔斯·摩根的质询。（西森为自己的行为道歉，但否认有不当行为。）
更早的先驱者之一是知名保守派网红CJ·皮尔逊。他讲述了一个广为流传的故事：2015年，他12岁时，圣诞节收到了一台摄像机，从此开始发布政治内容。他本来就对政治感兴趣，“这辈子从没做过YouTube视频”，但他决定录下自己热情洋溢地谈论对鲁迪·朱利亚尼的支持以及批评时任总统巴拉克·奥巴马的内容。点击发布后，“一夜之间就获得了200万次观看”。
根据行业资深人士的经验，成功的首要法则是放手让“创作者自由发挥”，正如皮尔逊所说。
https://www.cnn.com/
Z世代政治网红谈政治与行业生态
0:20 • 来源：CNN
Z世代政治网红谈政治与行业生态
0:20
“如果你有脚本，那就去买广告；如果你想要故事，那就雇网红，”康斯托克打趣道，如今她在TikTok和Instagram上拥有约200万粉丝。
有些政治合作比其他合作更顺利。“确实有些民主党人非常挑剔，”西森说，“他们想提前知道问题是什么、视频会是什么形式，还想看到最终剪辑版本之类的东西。”而这恰恰会削弱成就成功的真实性。
康斯托克告诉CNN，根据她的经验，制作政治内容存在风险——这可能会疏远那些为这些网红支付非政治内容酬劳的消费品牌。她在发帖支持哈里斯后，有六个月没有接到品牌合作邀约，她说：“有些品牌表示，她的内容‘不再符合我们的价值观’。”
不过，另一位左翼创作者艾丹·科恩-墨菲指出，根据他的经验，近年来制作政治内容的风险有所降低。对一些人来说，“我们拿到的酬劳数额高得惊人”，他说。
薪酬是网红行业最棘手的问题之一。
在典型的付费合作中，竞选团队会联系创作者或他们的经纪人（其中许多人都有经纪公司），提出“交付成果”的要求，这可能包括出席活动或在TikTok或Instagram上发布视频。
合作协议可能很简单——固定服务费——也可能变得非常复杂。政治竞选活动最常见的薪酬安排之一，是向咨询公司或媒体管理公司付款，再由这些公司与网红签约。
一家由民主党捐赠者支持的公司会为所谓的“支持民主”的创作者提供津贴，鼓励他们发布更多内容，从而扩大受众群体。
监管机构“竞选法律中心”的联邦竞选融资改革主任苏拉夫·戈什表示，为内容创作者提供的政治资金“正以惊人的速度增长”。
但目前几乎没有监管措施，也缺乏透明度。
并非所有发布的政治内容都是有偿的，但联邦法律并未要求创作者披露是否曾接受竞选团队或外部来源的资金来制作政治内容。
许多为候选人发声的创作者也会为特定事业或行业发声，但他们不必注册为说客。而且很难追踪支付给他们的资金来源和数额。
“缺乏明确的法律要求意味着，网红有时会发布付费声明，有时则不会，”戈什说，“因此，看到这类内容的选民只能依靠自己来判断透明度情况。”
接受CNN采访的网红透露了他们的一些薪酬安排。
当一个为卡玛拉·哈里斯政治行动委员会工作的营销公司联系康斯托克时，薪酬采用奖励机制。赢得“最佳信息传递”或“最高观看量”奖项的创作者可以获得2500美元，她告诉CNN。
尽管她有时会披露付费合作，但她那篇为她赢得2500美元的帖子并未标记为付费内容——她认为没有必要，因为没有人 dictate 脚本，而且薪酬并非明确针对该视频，而是针对其获得大量观看量。
西森透露，有一次计划生育协会的竞选活动为一篇帖子支付了他800美元，他认为一篇帖子的报酬在1000到2000美元之间算是微薄的。但他告诉CNN，他的好几笔合作都受到保密协议的约束。当被问及这是否意味着他不能披露报酬金额或付款方时，他表示这取决于保密协议的条款，并声称这在行业内是标准做法。他会披露与消费品牌的付费合作——但CNN并未在西森的社交媒体账号上找到任何标记为计划生育协会付费的内容。
今年4月，皮尔逊因受巴哈马政府雇佣，根据《外国代理人登记法》提交了相关文件。他所做的其他工作，比如为太阳能行业背书，会标记该能源集团，但并未注明是付费内容。他辩称自己的工作并非游说，而是“向我的受众宣传我已经关注的议题”。
“我不会打电话给国会议员说，‘嘿，让我们通过这项法案，让它成为现实’，”他说，付钱给他的机构“支持我一直在做的工作”。
缺乏规则和明确界定会引发阴谋论，政治网红圈经常出现关于所谓幕后推手操纵一切的谣言或争议。
有些传言并非事实。“我数不清有多少次有人告诉我，我拿了民主党全国委员会（DNC）的钱，”西森说，“我的回应是：我真希望能拿到民主党全国委员会的钱，那太棒了。”
但西森和民主党全国委员会都告诉CNN，该委员会从未支付过这位网红酬劳。
有些传言最终会让人尴尬——比如美国饮料协会的谈话要点被泄露给保守派网红经纪公司“Influenceable”，随后多名发布相关帖子的网红为背书内容的不真实性道歉。
还有一些情况引发了令人不安的疑问。例如，2024年，美国司法部起诉了“特尼特媒体”背后的两名俄罗斯特工，指控这家与共和党结盟的网红合作制作视频的公司，秘密接受俄罗斯资金资助，用于发布亲克里姆林宫的宣传内容。两名特工始终未被逮捕，但“特尼特媒体”的账号在起诉后停止发布视频。
去年，旨在招募和培训左翼网红的非营利组织“合唱团”陷入激烈争议，有人指控该组织接受了“十六三十基金”的资助。“十六三十基金”是自由派团体所谓“暗钱”的主要枢纽之一，无需披露捐赠者身份。该组织正受到共和党主导的众议院委员会的调查，“合唱团”和其他支持者称这是出于政治动机。“合唱团”告诉CNN，“十六三十基金”在其初创阶段提供了法律和行政支持，但此后并未再获得该组织的资助。
阿什利·圣克莱尔曾是“让美国再次伟大”（MAGA）运动的社交媒体红人，后来转而批评该运动和共和党。她说，她看到了这个行业的掠夺性本质。
“这不仅会扭曲受众群体，还会腐蚀你付钱雇佣的人，”她说，“当前经济形势非常艰难，人们很难拒绝金钱诱惑，所以把他们置于这种境地——给他们一个可以养家糊口的机会——我认为这是不对的。”
然而，付费言论与志愿倡导、真诚与推销、政治活动与单纯发帖之间的界限越来越模糊。内容创作者表示，最有效的政治影响力宣传往往根本不谈政治。
皮尔逊举例说：“特朗普总统会去做客西奥·冯和安德鲁·舒尔茨的播客，他不会谈论政治，而是会讲他作为‘曼哈顿之王’的精彩故事，以及他那段疯狂又酷炫的人生经历。”他将特朗普这种完全拥抱非传统媒体的精明做法，与哈里斯在2024年大选期间对此类做法的犹豫态度进行了对比。
2026年，据网红和政治分析师称，民主党此前一直处于守势，如今他们越来越意识到哪些因素能打造有效的宣传信息。
“很多时候，左翼阵营过度关注只报道政治的内容创作者，我认为让那些谈论文化和生活方式的创作者也参与进来非常重要，”劳伦·卡普说道。她曾参与哈里斯的竞选活动，现在经营着卢米纳里策略公司，这是一家由Z世代主导的数字公司，为竞选活动、政治人物和组织提供社交媒体服务。
“你可以利用人们已经拥有的平台，挖掘无数不同的故事，”康斯托克说。比如一位发布内容的单身母亲，“是非常有趣的代言人，因为我敢肯定，育儿成本、医疗成本等各种因素都对她产生了独特的影响。”
这类声音反映了普通人的生活经历，并在网络上表达出来，双方都试图捕捉这种声音。
“我认为民主党人和共和党人现在都明白，如果你输掉了网络文化战，你就会输掉选举，”布林林·霍利汉德说道。他是一名大学生，也是保守派网红，在Instagram上拥有约42.2万粉丝。
“我说的文化，不是指你的焦点小组、政治志愿者，或是那些关注所有政治账号的人，”他说，“我指的是那些可能只是因为和我同班而关注我的人，他们对政治一无所知。”
他说，他制作政治内容时，就是在和这类人群对话。
Inside the world of Gen Z political influencers, where the money is messy, but the work keeps coming
2026-07-25T10:00:26.992Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/25/politics/gen-z-political-influencers-money
Maria Comstock didn’t have a phone until she was 18. By her next birthday, she had a million followers.
Her “Point of View”-style videos on dating, politics and the workforce caught the eyes of social media users and, eventually, political campaigns, who found them relatable. What began as a Covid-era hobby has turned into a job.
But as it turns out, the work of a Gen Z political influencer is a complicated, unruly business, Comstock and others can attest.
Filming, production and publishing can come with all the responsibilities of a media executive. The clients can be demanding. The atmosphere is often competitive. The pay is inconsistent. And the party you support might get voted out of office anyway.
“Everyone’s a content creator in this day and age,” says Comstock, now 24 and using her digital fluency to help Democrats. The political work is “hard to define both legally, and on campaigns, in payment systems, and it’s just a new world that’s ever, ever evolving – and it gets messy.”
Nearly 50 million Gen Z members will be eligible to vote this November, according to Tufts University’s Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, making it a critical base to win for both parties. Generation Z, known by its shorthand Gen Z, is a term used to describe those born from 1997-2012.
After President Donald Trump and Republicans made significant inroads with young voters in 2024 through their dominance of nontraditional media, content creators and experts say Democrats are expanding their work with influencers and attracting a growing universe of social media personalities. Meanwhile, Republicans are forging ahead with an already successful playbook.
“Whether we like it or not, influencers are not going away, and they play a big, big role in how we make sense of politics,” said Jess Rauchberg, a Seton Hall University professor who studies digital culture. “I think at this point we can say influencers also sell us politics.”
But embarking on professional political influencing means navigating a new media industry with few regulations, a dizzying array of payment structures and ever-changing political relationships, according to nearly a dozen influencers who spoke with CNN. “Authenticity” is paramount. Whether to disclose payments, which can undermine that authenticity, is subject to debate.
Not all popular political influencers turn content creation into a livelihood – for some it becomes an added source of income on top of more conventional professions or simply remains a leisure activity.
For Harry Sisson, it’s become a full-time job in the six years since he started posting election content.
Now 23, Sisson wasn’t even old enough to cast a ballot when he began posting on social media to influence the Democratic vote with videos touting then-President Joe Biden.
“I was in my basement during Covid, like any other teenager,” he recalls. Everything was shut down, “so I was scrolling on social media and I saw you know, other young people talking about politics, talking about Joe Biden and Donald Trump. And I just thought I could do it too.”
Two million TikTok followers later, top Democrats court his time, and he has even caught the attention of Trump, who posted an AI video last year depicting him dumping sewage from a plane on Sisson and other protesters at a No Kings rally.
Now, Sisson wakes up to“immediately scroll the news” to look for things to post for his YouTube channel, TikTok, and Instagram; “the whole nine yards.” His management company vets his appearances and like other popular influencers, his personal life has been scrutinized. In March 2025, he faced grilling from UK broadcaster Piers Morgan after being accused of allegedly pressuring multiple women to sext him. (Sisson has apologized for his behavior but denied wrongdoing.)
An even earlier pioneer, CJ Pearson, a well-known conservative influencer, recounts an oft-told story of how he started posting political content in 2015, at age 12, after getting a camcorder for Christmas. Already interested in politics, he’d “never made a YouTube video before in my life” when he decided to record himself passionately discussing his support for Rudy Giuliani and criticizing then-President Barack Obama. He hit publish and “got 2 million views overnight.”
A cardinal rule for success, according to those with years of industry experience, is to let go and “let creators cook,” as Pearson put it.
https://www.cnn.com/
Gen Z political influencers talk politics and business
0:20 • Source: CNN
Gen Z political influencers talk politics and business
0:20
“If you have a script, buy an ad, if you want a story, hire an influencer,” quipped Comstock, who now has some 2 million followers across TikTok and Instagram.
Some political partnerships work better than others. “There are totally some Democrats out there who are very particular,” Sisson said. “They want to know questions ahead of time, what the format is going to be. They want to see a final cut and things like that,” which can rather diminish the authenticity that leads to success.
Comstock told CNN that in her experience, making political content has its risks – it can alienate consumer brands that pay some of these influencers for nonpolitical content. After posting in support of Harris, she didn’t get a brand deal for six months, she said: Some brands said her content “no longer align with our values,” Comstock said.
However, Aidan Kohn-Murphy, another left-leaning creator, noted that from his experience, making political content has become less risky in recent years. For some, “we’re reaching crazy sums of money,” he said.
Pay is one of the thorniest issues in the influencing game.
In a typical paid gig, a campaign will contact creators or their agents (many of them have management) to propose “deliverables,” which could be appearances at events or videos posted to TikTok or Instagram.
A deal could be straightforward – a set fee for service – or become quite complicated. One of the most common payment arrangements for political campaigns is to pay a consultancy or media management company that then contracts influencers.
One company backed by Democratic donors pays stipends for what it calls “pro-democracy” creators to post more and thereby grow audience.
Political financing for content creators “is just growing by leaps,” according to Saurav Ghosh, the director of federal campaign finance reform at Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog group.
Yet there are very few guardrails and little transparency.
Not all posted political content is paid, but posters are not federally required to disclose if they have been given money by a campaign or outside source for a piece of political content.
Many creators who post in support of candidates also do so for specific causes or industries, but do not have to register as lobbyists. And it is hard to track the source and amount of money being paid to them.
“The lack of a clear legal requirement means that influencers are sometimes going to provide a disclaimer (about being paid), and sometimes they’re not,” Ghosh said. “So voters who are seeing that kind of content are left to fend for themselves as far as transparency goes.”
Creators who spoke to CNN revealed some of their payment arrangements.
When a marketing company hired by a pro-Kamala Harris PAC contracted Comstock, the pay depended on a prize structure. Winning the “best messaging” or “most views” against other content got you $2,500, she told CNN.
Although she sometimes discloses paid work, the post for which she won the $2,500 is not marked as paid content — she argued it was unnecessary since no one dictated the script, and the pay was not explicitly for the video but for reaching lots of people.
Though he shared that one Planned Parenthood campaign paid him $800 for a post, and that he considers even $1,000 to $2,000 a modest sum for a post, Sisson told CNN several of his deals are subject to nondisclosure agreements. Asked whether this meant he could not disclose how much he was paid or who was paying, he said it depended on the NDA, which he asserted was standard in the industry. He discloses paid partnerships with consumer brands – but CNN could not find any content disclosed as paid for by Planned Parenthood on Sisson’s social media feeds.
In April, Pearson filed paperwork under the Foreign Agents Registration Act after he was hired by the government of the Bahamas. Other work he has done, such an endorsement for solar energy, tags the energy group but remains unmarked as paid. He argues that his work is not lobbying, but“educating my audience about issues that I already care about.”
“I’m not calling, you know, members of Congress and saying, ‘Hey, let’s get this passed. Let’s make this happen,’” he said. Organizations paying him “support the work I’m already doing.”
The lack of rules and clarity can invite conspiracy, with the political influencing world frequently bubbling up with rumors or controversy over supposed puppet masters pulling the strings.
Some are not true. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told I get paid by the DNC (Democratic National Committee),” says Sisson. “My response is: I’d love to be paid by the DNC, that’d be great,” he said.
But both Sisson and the DNC told CNN the committee has never paid the influencer.
Some turn out to be a source of embarrassment – such as when talking points from the American Beverage Association that were given to a conservative influencer management company, Influenceable, were leaked. Several influencers who made the posts apologized for the inauthenticity of the endorsements.
And some situations raise uncomfortable questions. For example, in 2024, the US Justice Department indicted two Russian operatives behind Tenet Media, alleging that the company, which worked with Republican-aligned influencers to produce videos on its accounts on different social media platforms, was being secretly funded by Russian money to promote pro-Kremlin propaganda. The operatives were never arrested, but Tenet Media accounts stopped releasing videos after the indictment.
And last year, Chorus, a nonprofit that has sought to recruit and train left-leaning influencers, became the subject of intense controversy following accusations that it was receiving funding from the Sixteen Thirty Fund,a leading hub of so-called “dark” money for liberal groups that is not required to disclose its donors. The group is under investigation by a Republican-led House committee, which Chorus and other supporters have called politically motivated. Chorus told CNN that the Sixteen Thirty Fund set up legal and administrative support when it first launched and it has not received funding from the group..
Ashley St. Clair, a former MAGA social media star turned critic of the movement and the Republican Party, says she sees a predatory quality to the industry.
“Not only does it bastardize the audience, but it also corrupts the people that you’re paying,” she said. “It is a very tough economy. It’s hard for people to say no to money, and so to put them in that position where now they have to, they’re offered an opportunity that could help feed their family. I don’t think that’s right.”
Yet the lines between paid speech and volunteer advocacy, sincerity and sales, politicking and mere posting have just been getting blurrier all the time, not least because, content creators say, often the most effective political influencing is not to talk about politics at all.
As an example, “President Trump would go on (podcasts) Theo Von and Andrew Schultz, and he wouldn’t talk about politics. He would talk about his cool stories from being, like, the king of Manhattan, and he would talk about the crazy cool life that he’s led,” said Pearson, contrasting what he saw as Trump’s savvy in wholly embracing nontraditional media with Harris’s hesitancy to do so during the 2024 election.
In 2026, Democrats, who influencers and political analysts say have been on the back foot, are waking up more to the wider world of what could make for effective messaging.
“A lot of the times there’s an over index (on the left) on focusing on content creators that only cover politics, and I think it’s important for us to have people who are talking about culture and lifestyle have a seat at the table as well too,” said Lauren Kapp, a veteran of the Harris campaign who now runs Luminary Strategies, a Gen Z-led digital firm that handles social media for campaigns, political figures and organizations.
“There’s so many different stories you can tap to platforms people already have,” said Comstock. A single mother who posts content, for example, is “a really interesting surrogate, because I’m sure she’s been uniquely impacted by childcare costs, by health care costs, by all these different things.”
Those kinds of voices reflect the experience of everyday life, expressed online, that both sides are trying to capture.
“I think Democrats and Republicans both know now that if you lose online culture, you lose the election,” says Brilyn Hollyhand, a college student and conservative influencer with roughly 422,000 followers on Instagram.
“(By) culture, I don’t mean your focus groups or your political volunteers or the ones that follow every political account possible,” he said. “I mean the ones that maybe just follow me because they sit by me in class and they know nothing else about politics.”
That’s who he is talking to when he makes political content, he said.