Influencers, “a new way to reach the public” for state actors

American content creators in the pay of Donald Trump, influencers manipulated on the TikTok platform during the Romanian presidential election, European Internet personalities approached to disseminate Russian propaganda… Never the figure of the influencer, in an electoral context particularly intense across the world, has only been so scrutinized in 2024.

Researcher Renée DiResta is a specialist in these themes and author of the book Invisible Rulers : The People Who Turn Lies into Reality (PublicAffairs editions, 2024, untranslated). Previously director of research at the Stanford Internet Observatory and now associate professor at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University in Washington, she explains to Monde the implications of the triangle that influencers, algorithms and Internet users form today in terms of disinformation.

In your book, you draw an interesting parallel between today’s influencers and what researchers Katz and Lazarsfeld called “opinion leaders” almost eighty years ago. Can you explain it?

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