Comment About us is a forum for exploring issues of race and identity in the United States. Sign up for the newsletter. Lexi Overstreet wanted to attend the January 6 hearings. But he worried that he didn’t know enough to follow her. “I wanted an excuse to examine and research issues,” Overstreet said. “And I realized that, oh, if I have to go explain it to somebody else … then I have to understand it a lot better.” So the 27-year-old from Portland, Ore., opened her TikTok account. But instead of the political campaign videos he usually makes, he decided to create clips recapping the hearings for his 1,257 followers. Her videos, ranging from 24 seconds to about a minute in length, give quick, point-by-point versions of the days’ events with photos of key players appearing behind her. She’s not the only one. On popular social media platforms like TikTok, YouTube and Twitch, young people explain the hearings. One influencer filled out a bingo card with “top Republican distractions” at the hearings, another commented on the hearings with an animated talking statue. Some conservative creators have touched on the hearings as well. One compared audition ratings to regularly scheduled programming. Christy McLaughlin, a 26-year-old congressional candidate in Florida, took to TikTok to slam Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) as a RINO, or Republican in Name Only. But most of the recaps tend to be liberal. Cheney states that Trump said on Jan. 6 that Pence “deserves” to be hanged Content creators say their peers gravitate to them because of their approachable approach. “When I break down the quieter parts and the easier to listen to, I hope it encourages some of my followers to either look into it more or watch it themselves,” said another creator, Emma Silverman, 23. In a recent recap of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony, Silverstreet covered her mouth in mock surprise as Hutchinson testified on video that played behind her that Trump threw away his lunch. “Believe it or not, that’s not even the most spontaneous thing that Trump is describing,” Silverstreet adds. At the end of the video, he implores others to come back and watch the full hearings, “It’s extremely powerful.” The video has about 1,000 comments and 26,000 likes. Millions of young people paid attention to the work of the Jan. 6 committee — a recent Monmouth poll found that about half of Americans under 35 have followed them a lot or a little. Some watch the sessions on TV in real time, but others say they watch via traditional or social media. “This is definitely the Watergate of our generation,” said another creator, Myca Hinton, 22, who started using TikTok to watch funny videos to pass the time during the pandemic, but turned to making her own videos to quench her keen interest in politics. “My American government professors in high school definitely helped me find my interest in politics and encouraged me,” Hinton said. To find topics to talk about in her videos, Hinton subscribes to various newsletters and mainstream publications and will pick three or four topics to cover, pulling in what’s most interesting and what people are talking about on social media. One of her recent videos is about boycotting Walgreens over reports that the pharmacy is denying birth control to some customers. For the auditions, he will watch them live. “I take notes, I go over my notes, and I kind of consolidate my findings into something that I think is easy to follow to explain in a video,” Hinton said. Hinton said she’s gotten good comments from commenters (including the metallic makeup on her green eyes). “For the most part, I would say it’s overwhelmingly positive and people are asking the right questions,” Hinton said. These types of recap videos, which are also popular on other platforms like YouTube, thrive online because of the “parasocial” relationship the viewer has with the audience, said Shannon McGregor, an assistant professor of journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. . . By watching content from a specific person, the viewer can feel like they know that creator personally, McGregor said. With that comes “a sense of proximity and a greater likelihood of relying on or acting on information coming from those people,” he said. But there are pitfalls, McGregor said. It is easier to spread inaccurate or incomplete information. Many of the creators say they work hard to avoid this. Silverman, from Austin, reads articles from mainstream media outlets and cites her sources in her videos. She also tries to use video clips of hearings she finds on Congress.gov to add credibility to her recaps. “My main goal behind my channel was to dispel the misinformation spread throughout the media,” Silverman said. The creators hope their recaps will bring the highlights to a new, younger audience on TikTok. “I think it’s really important to talk about it on the app, because the more people know what’s going on, the more they care about it,” Silverman said. “The more interested they are, the more pressure there is on the authorities to impose consequences on those involved.”
