Elon Musk’s common posts of robust assist for president-elect Donald Trump on his social media platform X and his anticipated position inside the new US administration current a rolling reside case research on the position of social media inside public and political debate.
Media house owners who wish to exert their affect and management the general public agenda are nothing new. So what can the historical past of media magnates inform us in regards to the present cosy relationship between Musk and Trump?
In 1889, French creator Jules Verne wrote a brief story together with his son Michel referred to as Within the 12 months 2889, which launched the fictional Fritz Napoleon Smith, a newspaper magnate who’s so influential he can inform any politician what to do.
This portrayal anticipated the affect and management exerted by actual “press barons” all through the twentieth century and into the twenty first. Rich media house owners changing into immediately concerned in politics all through historical past highlights a posh relationship that may exist between populist politics and the pursuits of the very rich.
The early twentieth century newspaper proprietor, William Randolph Hearst, shifted from selling working-class rights to utilizing sensationalist rhetoric as he grew to become more and more right-wing through the Thirties. Certainly one of Italy’s richest males on the time of his dying, Silvio Berlusconi served 4 phrases as prime minister whereas he was proprietor of a number of tv stations, magazines and newspapers. Each Hearst and Berlusconi had been massively politically influential of their time.
The actions of press house owners and potential house owners has even provoked adjustments to the legislation in some nations. For example, in Could of this 12 months, in Westminster ministers handed laws to dam sovereign wealth funds from controlling UK-based media. It was an try to regulate the affect overseas governments might exert via direct media possession.
Learn extra:
Rupert Murdoch and the rise and fall of the press barons: how a lot energy do newspapers nonetheless have?
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Prior to now different strategies have been used to restrict media possession. In 2017, the Murdoch household’s transfer to purchase all of Sky (the satellite tv for pc TV and broadband firm) was blocked. Murdoch later offered his stake in Sky.
Trump and Musk
Media possession and the endorsement of media retailers – both immediately or not directly – could make or break politicians’ careers.
So how is the Trump and Musk relationship completely different from the best way press barons operated in earlier instances? The team-up between Trump and Musk extends far past the connection between media house owners and political agendas within the latest previous. Trump is nominating Musk for a number one position in his deliberate Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE), which considerably mockingly isn’t a authorities division, however a consulting group, and, with two co-directors, seems to have already got an inefficient construction.
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Musk’s affect on Trump is instantly evident, not least within the division’s acronym. DOGEcoin is a cryptocurrency that Musk has lengthy favoured. That is partly due to its origins as a parody of different cryptocurrencies, together with bitcoin. It has been steadily growing in worth because the election.
Eradicating pinch factors
An unbiased and free press, in addition to freedom of particular person expression, is a key a part of a wholesome democracy. It needs to be a part of the checks and balances that maintain media house owners in verify, in addition to holding politicians to account.
Having constrained mechanisms for distribution, equivalent to the necessity to maintain a broadcast licence, or the mandatory huge funding in printing presses and nationwide distribution networks, made conventional media – and the press barons who owned them – extra readily controllable. This historic capability for presidency to exert management over the media, equivalent to through broadcasting licenses, can also be one potential cause why some media house owners have beforehand entered politics.
There have been quite a few potential motivations for Berlusconi to run for the prime minister’s place in Italy. However his tenure was marked by accusations of main conflicts of curiosity on account of his broadcasting empire and talent to affect different media whereas in workplace.
Social media channels take away many, if not all, of the pinch factors of management and stability. Particular person customers create the content material, with various ranges of moderation (with some platforms adopting a hands-off strategy) in lots of nations. It’s instantly out there to anybody with entry to the channel and with little respect for nationwide boundaries, besides the place nationwide authorities select to not permit it.
Vital enhancements in synthetic intelligence imply that “bots” can amplify political messages aggressively. Not like media house owners of the previous, Musk requires no broadcast licence for X or licence to publish his personal views on the platform.
The facility of Musk
Elon Musk is an influencer and proprietor. In October 2024, he grew to become his personal platform’s most adopted particular person, with greater than 205 million followers. This can be a important public platform for any particular person. It’s uncertain whether or not any press baron of the previous had such a strong soapboax with which to speak immediately with the general public. When bots are mixed with algorithms which are set to advertise, particular person messages usually tend to discover favour with particular audiences. This creates a strong echo chamber for one man’s opinions.
Certainly one of Musk’s personal messages, following his interview with Donald Trump in August 2024, quantified this energy. He posted: “Mixed views of the dialog with @realDonaldTrump and subsequent dialogue by different accounts now about 1 billion.”
In the course of the summer season rioting within the UK, Musk’s messages offered a really particular political opinion, based mostly closely on conspiracy theories he was studying on X. A now deleted tweet on August 4 brought on probably the most concern: “Civil battle is inevitable”, it learn.
There are already alerts that Musk could also be an excessive amount of of a handful for the political elites in Mar-a-Lago and Washington. However the actuality could possibly be extra mundane. When, and if, the Division of Authorities Effectivity, and the broader Trump administration, struggles to take away the checks and balances which are in place to guard atypical folks from unregulated exercise by firms equivalent to SpaceX, Starlink, Neuralink, Tesla or X, Musk could effectively lose his present curiosity in authorities and transfer on to one thing else.
So whereas the press barons of the previous had been in a position to exert appreciable affect on politicians, in principle at the least, there have been additionally levers to restrict their energy. Many of those levers don’t apply in Musk’s case, however frustration could but limit Musk’s foray into US politics.
