Political Fans and Cheerleaders

Drawing on stories of citizens who voluntarily participate in the viral marketing of electoral candidates, as well as developments from the 2016 Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders campaigns, this chapter explores the complex intersection between traditional top-down electioneering and grassroots political promotion that emerges from popular culture. It considers how a fanlike cultural engagement with modern political brands fosters participatory forms of candidate promotion that extend far beyond a campaign’s official digital media outreach. Here, citizen marketers take on the role of cheerleaders for their political “teams,” seeking to model enthusiasm and rally their like-minded peers. This dynamic is becoming particularly important for outsider and insurgent candidates who depend on groundswells of grassroots momentum on social media and elsewhere to achieve electoral success. However, these practices also risk furthering the dynamics of political polarization and partisanship that threaten to divide the polity into self-enclosed and opposing camps.