New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is popular. People online would like to be popular. To achieve that, they are posting about Mamdani. The New York Times is on the case.
In a report on the Mayor’s seemingly outsized popularity online, the Times insinuates that Mamdani has a paid propaganda arm made up of online influencers who are happy to sing his praises on command—though it admits it has more innuendo than evidence.
Per the Times, Mamdani’s director of new media and cultural communications has cultivated a network of online accounts that she sends talking points to when the administration has a new initiative it would like to push. Those creators and commentators then post about the policy, boosting it to their followers. In exchange, they get to stay in the loop and seem to maybe occasionally get access to the mayor. The Times reports that influencers have been “invited to events with the mayor where some traditional reporters are excluded.”…