This week, US President Joe Biden’s website posted a job opening for “Partner Manager, Content and Meme Pages,” according to Politico.
Presidential campaigns have been trying to win over the internet ecosystem for years, such as Hillary Clinton did when she urged young voters in 2016 to “Pokémon Go’ to the polls.” At the time, observers attributed Clinton’s shocking defeat to former President Donald Trump in part to “meme magic.”
Biden’s 2024 campaign was already ramping up its online influencer partnership programme from 2020. Now, a new job opening provides a full-time position for a “seasoned meme lord.” The political fight thus shifts online as well.
Clarke Humphrey, the Biden campaign’s “senior adviser for digital persuasion,” stated that the new manager’s role would not be to create memes, but to partner with content creators who would then agree to create memes on behalf of the campaign.
Obviously we cannot dictate what any of these people publish, and we would never want to do that. But what we are hoping to do is build relationships with the folks who run these accounts, share resources and brass tacks talking points with them so that they have the information they need.
Meanwhile, Trump achieved success in the digital realm not only because of the anarchic image and his trollish supporters, but also because the Republican nominee “just seemed real.” Biden’s campaign is not trying to appeal to the same feelings of outrage and indignation that Trump’s fiery online rhetoric reliably evokes. This puts the current president at a disadvantage in the digital sphere, where users looking for political content are often more likely to respond to Trump-inspired appeals.
This is why Biden’s campaign staff is looking for a meme manager with a softer approach who can embed campaign messages into the online ecosystem in a more organic way.
All we’re trying to do is give them information about what Joe Biden has done, and what his plan is for a second term.
