When European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivered her annual State of the Union address last September, setting out the EU’s priorities for the rest of the year, journalists were not the only ones ready to report on it. For the first time, the EU invited a cohort of 50 influencers into the European Parliament in Strasbourg to relay the message directly to their thousands of followers.
The content creators — mostly Gen-Z and millennials with a strong pro-democratic stance — were given access to Von der Leyen herself, as well as commissioners and MEPs, and invited to ask questions much like traditional reporters. Except, their posts, vlogs, and YouTube videos were likely to land in far more feeds than most conventional media outlets could ever hope for.
The unusual communications campaign is emblematic of how the EU — often depicted by critics as a dinosaur buried in its own paperwork — is actively trying to win over new audiences, particularly younger ones for whom mainstream media is no longer the default source of daily information. The move, however, could also unleash a flurry of unintended consequences, from politicians sidestepping conventional media outlets for influencers, ultimately trading political accountability for a PR stunt, to the proliferation of unchecked news, researchers say.
Audiences worldwide are increasingly getting their news from social media, podcast and video platforms, where personalities and influencers play a “significant role in shaping public debate,” according to the 2025 Digital News Report, a media trends overview compiled annually by the Reuters Institute and the University of Oxford.
The report found that one in five Americans got their news from right-wing podcaster Joe Rogan in the week after Donald Trump’s inauguration. In France, Hugo Décrypte, a journalist and influencer known for creating videos on world affairs, is estimated to reach 22% of under-35s.
By contrast, traditional media like TV, print and news websites are in steep decline, according to the report, with trust in mainstream news lowest in Greece and Hungary, where it stands at 22%. EU member states Bulgaria and Croatia, meanwhile, stand out as the countries with the highest levels of news avoidance worldwide.
Against this backdrop, “we would be foolish if, as an institution, we didn’t use influencers,” one veteran Commission official with knowledge of the institution’s communications plans told The Parliament, asking to remain anonymous in order to speak candidly. “It’s insane how many eyeballs they get.”
The move also comes at a time when Russia is spending millions of euros to push anti-EU narratives, while the United States is increasingly unapologetic in its support for anti-democratic political forces, as made clear in its recently released National Security Strategy.
Moldova’s parliamentary election last autumn offered a stark example of how the Kremlin is weaponising social media to spread disinformation and amplify anti-EU rhetoric to reassert its influence on the former Soviet state. And to counter that hybrid warfare, Brussels employed similar tactics. In the weeks preceding the election, a series of videos showed the EU’s commissioner for enlargement, Marta Kos, discussing European solidarity with Emilian Cretu, one of Moldova’s biggest influencers, who passed on the message to his nearly 600,000 followers.
“We live in the era of global commentary,” said Mykolas Katkus, CEO and co-founder of Repsense, a Lithuanian company specialising in foreign information manipulation and interference (FIMI). To Katkus, collaborating with influencers is no longer optional to get the right message across for those who want to counter conspiracy theories and push out facts to a broad audience.
“We need to find effective ways to democratically engage with these people if they are in the business of debunking propaganda,” he said of influencers committed to democratic values.
Recruiting influencers to save democracy?
To reach its increasingly connected citizens, the EU executive now routinely invites influencers on press trips and has even established a task force dedicated exclusively to relations with content creators.
And more is in store. Last November, the Berlaymont announced the European Democracy Shield strategy, intended to boost its own capacity to counter FIMI and disinformation. The initiative, which recognises the role of influencers in shaping the results of political campaigns, involves creating a voluntary network of content creators to spread awareness of how the EU operates, while helping audiences recognise misleading content.
“🤳 Influencers and content creators are reshaping how we consume politics & news. If institutions want citizens to hear them, creators must be in the room, reporting from where the action happens,” Yasser Machat, a communications specialist at the Commission, wrote in a LinkedIn post last September.
“Relying on a LinkedIn Canva post or a 20:00 TV segment isn’t enough anymore. Creators are part of the media ecosystem now,” added Machat, who in his free time runs an Arabic-language YouTube channel sharing lifestyle and digital wellbeing tips to his nearly 150,000 subscribers.
The Commission’s communications arm did not reply to numerous requests for comment on how it intends to engage with influencers going forward.
Out with press conferences, in with podcasts
Yet, while the numbers make it clear that influencers can no longer be ignored, the new approach carries significant risks, particularly as it contributes to the gatekeeper role that traditional media had long played. In this new era, government officials and politicians can now gain visibility without facing tough questions from trained reporters.
“What I see as a risk is when a politician substitutes journalists with influencers,” said the Commission official, noting such a prospect is already partly at play, both within and outside the EU.
Von der Leyen is reportedly difficult to secure for interviews at all, making influencers’ outsized access a point of frustration for Brussels’ press corps. Several Brussels-based reporters recalled having attended events where Von der Leyen made no time to speak to the media, only to later see videos of the Commission chief replying to less politically sensitive questions from influencers.
And while Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been openly hostile to news organisations, last year he gave several interviews to right‑wing podcasts, likely an attempt to connect with younger voters ahead of this year’s election, which polls suggest he could lose.
Edward Hurcombe, a senior lecturer at the School of Media and Communication at the RMIT University in Australia, called the shift “concerning,” given that politicians who favour the so-called new media over legacy news organisations often do so to get preferential treatment. Unlike reporters, whose articles are subject to a thorough editing process and standards and ethics guidelines, content creators have free rein over when to hit ‘publish.’
“They [politicians] know that maybe podcasters are politically sympathetic because they don't have to be objective, nor are they media trained,” explained Hurcombe.
Milking social media for real-world power
The stakes are just as high for the European Parliament, where far-right and far-left parties have quickly turned to these platforms to compensate for limited funding and scant airtime on mainstream media outlets. With more than 2 million followers on TikTok, Jordan Bardella, the 29-year-old leader of France's far-right National Rally, is often presented as an illustrative example of how digital fame can be milked for real-world political power.
And the evidence goes far beyond Bardella. From the victory of Fidias Panayiotou, a 24-year-old Cypriot Youtuber turned MEP to the TikTok-fuelled rise of ultranationalist firebrand Călin Georgescu in Romania’s presidential elections, electoral success is increasingly aided by the artful deployment of YouTube and TikTok.
Meanwhile, legacy political movements are struggling to keep pace. POLITICO research from last March showed that members of the far-right Identity and Democracy and The Left parliamentary groups were for far more active on TikTok than their moderate peers.
“In the established parties there's a lack of realisation of how much power social media holds,” said Carolin Isabel Hochstrat, a 21-year-old content creator whose TikTok videos, seen by over 16,000 followers, span from tips on landing a traineeship at the Parliament to behind-the-scenes glimpses of Strasbourg plenary week.
Reluctance to invest more time and resources in social media suggest that centrist parties are yet to grasp what’s really at stake, the creator said.
“When you're not engaging on social media, like, in a nice way that you actually want to look at these videos, you ignore the fact that you carry responsibility,” Hochstrat said, arguing that this amounts to yielding more time and space to extremist political voices.
Eventually, politicians hoping to remain relevant will have no choice but to understand the codes of social media, Hochstrat said, noting that many people have misconceptions about the platforms and how to use them.
“They always say, ‘Yeah, but I don’t want to do any dances,’ and I’m like, ‘No one’s forcing you to dance. Please don’t dance,’” she joked.
The influencer wave is about to break
How political institutions will ultimately collaborate with influencers and content creators remains to be worked out. What is clear, though, is that journalists no longer hold a monopoly on information, and that political institutions on the hunt for a larger outreach will have to consider speaking to content creators, whether they like it or not, experts say.
“There is always going to be space for journalists from established institutions, but they are going to be competing with all these other actors,” Hurcombe, the Australia-based lecturer, told The Parliament.
Nonetheless, for those already inside the social media system, this is only a prelude to a much larger shock to the media ecosystem.
“I feel this wave is about to break real quickly,” said Hochstrat, who recently launched Democratic Spin, a communications agency offering social media consultancy to politicians and political organisations at both the national and European level. Its services include putting lawmakers in touch with potential influencers they could hire to boost visibility.
And a sense that the new direction of travel has been set and won’t be easily reversed is beginning to take hold within EU institutions.
“People don’t read newspapers anymore,” the Commission official told The Parliament. “That’s a fight against windmills.”
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