Thread by @mariannaspring

🚨 Meet the BBC’s undercover US Voters!

For Americast and Newsnight, I’ve created five characters - informed by research from Pew - to investigate what voters are exposed to and recommended across social media at a turbulent time for US politics.

bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-…

Learn all about who they are & what they’ve seen so far on the first episode of the new-look Americast podcast & on Newsnight last night.

The characters reflect views across the political spectrum in the US and have 5 social media profiles. bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0…

The profiles are informed by data from Pew, which defined nine different typologies of US voters after conducting a wide-ranging survey in 2021.

The BBC has selected five of those nine types and based characters on those. More on how I created them here.

Let’s meet them…

1️⃣ Larry is what's known as a Faith and Flag Conservative. They're mostly white, male and about a third, like Larry, are retired. He's a committed Republican and Trump supporter. Pro-guns, anti-abortion. He gets his info from Fox News.

What’s he come across on social media? So far the account has seen posts criticizing the raid on Trump’s Mar-a-lago home. Some accounts say they plan to quit Instagram for Trump’s new platform Truth Social. Larry’s also been recommended pages promoting guns and other weapons.

2️⃣ Meet Mom-of-three Britney - who represents the populist right group. She’s a 50-year-old school secretary from Texas.

She shares a number of Larry's conservative views but she has a particular issue with big business and think the rich are behind a sinister global plot.

She's come across false claims on TikTok that Trump really won the 2020 election - sometimes referencing the raid on Mar-A-Lago & using violent rhetoric. The account has also been exposed to & recommended pages promoting false claims the election was rigged on Insta and Facebook

3️⃣ Gabriela is the more neutral voter - dubbed the Stressed sideliner in Pew’s research. Low-income, this group has the highest share of Hispanic voters. She's much less interested in politics - but when she is, she’s more likely to align with Democrats on guns and abortion.

So far, she hasn’t been exposed to much politics at all. Her profiles are generally apolitical and so instead, her social media feeds are dominated by posts about fashion, dance and saving money during the cost of living crisis.

4️⃣ Next - it’s Michael. He’s a committed Democrat and his group has the highest proportion of Black voters. He values faith and family and works as a teacher. He's moderate on social issues and turns to news outlets like CNN.

Unsurprisingly as he follows them, Michael has come across lots of content from the Democrat party.
His accounts have also been pushed memes like this one enjoying the investigation into Trump.

5️⃣ Finally we have our youngest fictitious voter Emma. Left and liberal, highly educated - and not into God. Passionate about the environment, racial and gender equality and as you'd imagine is pro-choice on abortion. What did her social media's algorithms come up with?

She’s been recommended Black Lives Matter accounts - and pages about environmental activism and women’s rights. Plus ads for the New York Times have found their way into her feed.

Even after just a week - our accounts have encountered false and misleading claims, aggravated by that raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. Here’s the response from the social media sites.

We’ll see over coming weeks what our fictitious friends encounter on their social media feeds.

All of this with the brilliant production teams and editors at Americast - @SamBonham @AlixPickles @JonathanAspinw1 - as well as at Newsnight @StuartDenman @caithanrahan @stewartmaclean & online!

And I bet #Americast is one of the first BBC pods to make it onto BeReal!

The fab illustrations for @BBCNewsnight are by @HendinArts - and the headers for online by the visual journalism team at the BBC.

Also thanks to newsnight graphics for their work too!

Listen to Americast on BBC Sounds and tune into BBC 2's Newsnight for regular updates on what these profiles are recommended around major news events, and investigations into how they are targeted in the build-up to the midterms. bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-…

Watch me talking all about the undercover voters here on @BBCNewsnight & remember to give #Americast a listen too on @BBCSounds !

Here’s us sitting in the #Americast studio talking to the brilliant @adamfleming & #Newscast - and me explaining these many characters & their social media profiles.