“You’re basically seeing your psyche projected back at you when you open any of these social apps these days.”

Ryan Davis is a longtime progressive digital strategist. He got his start as an internet organizer on Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign, worked on Barack Obama’s groundbreaking 2008 campaign, and later founded Blue State Digital’s social media team. Since then, he’s worked with hundreds of nonprofits and campaigns around the world. Today, he’s the Founder and CEO of People First, one of the largest social impact influencer agencies in the US, and the author of The Month in Digital.

In this episode, Ryan and I get nerdy about what influencer work actually looks like heading into 2026—especially for campaigns that don’t have a huge budget, a big staff, or celebrities on speed dial.

We talk about why “influencers” shouldn’t be treated like a replacement for celebrity endorsements, why micro and nano creators can be more useful than the biggest names on your feed, and why the real point isn’t “going viral.” The point is scaling persuasion the same way you scale field: more trusted messengers, more conversations, more communities, more repetition.

We also dig into platform fragmentation (your internet is not my internet), why Nextdoor is an underrated battleground for hyperlocal issue conversations, and why campaigns and orgs should be investing in owned content like email and blogs—not just to fundraise, but to tell stories and show up in the places people are now getting information (including AI-driven search).

If you’re trying to run a modern comms program without losing your mind, this one’s for you.

Some key takeaways from my conversation with Ryan

• How campaigns are using influencer relationships right now
• How the TikTok sale affected influencer work (it’s not what you think)
• We nerded out on Nextdoor (yes, it’s a thing)
• Big influencers vs micro/nano influencers
• Influencers aren’t about “going viral.” They’re about scaling field
• Why your internet is different than everyone else’s (and why that matters)
• Why it’s time to think beyond the viral launch video
• How to do influencer work with a small budget
• The new tool People First launched for small campaigns: Val
• Email still matters—but your email can’t only be fundraising
• Blogging, Substack, and the new reality of SEO/AEO
• Serialization that isn’t about the candidate

One of my favorite ideas from the conversation: serialized content that’s about the campaign or the issues, but not dependent on the candidate being the main character. Ryan floated the idea of docu-style vertical series where a staffer or organizer becomes the through-line—letting campaigns produce consistent, platform-friendly storytelling without needing the candidate to carry every single episode.

My favorite quote (and the mindset shift it demands): “You’re basically seeing your psyche projected back at you when you open any of these social apps these days,” he wasn’t just describing algorithmic personalization—he was describing a strategic trap campaigns fall into.

If the people on your team are highly engaged political consumers, your internal sense of “what’s breaking through” is going to be skewed. You’re in the bubble by definition. The job isn’t to dominate the bubble. The job is to build enough credible, distributed messengers (and enough repeatable content) to reach the people who aren’t thinking about you at all.

If you’re running digital for a campaign or nonprofit and you’re trying to build something sustainable—something that reaches beyond the choir—this conversation will give you a bunch of practical ways to think about creator strategy, platform fragmentation, and scaling persuasion.

Find links, transcript, video and more at HelloMergeTag.com.

Lucy Ritzmann is a progressive digital strategist and a founding member of Courier’s national newsroom. She’s a former co‑author of FWIW, their must-read weekly email for us political digital nerds. I first met her collaborating on The FYP — a weekly Courier email covering political TikTok, specifically focused on how the two presidential campaigns were approaching one of the most important and complex platforms in politics.

Lucy is currently in law school at Georgetown, but when she’s not buried in casebooks, she’s writing a great Substack newsletter called The Group Chat Correspondent.

I invited her on the pod to talk about the current state of independent progressive media, what trends she’s following at the moment and a whole lot more.

We covered:

• Why Substack is more than just a newsletter platform — and how it’s becoming a community infrastructure tool
• “It’s what Bluesky was supposed to be” — building in a space without trolls
• How Lucy is growing The Group Chat Correspondent — what’s working and what’s not
• What success actually looks like for an independent progressive media outlet
• The 2026 landscape for progressive independent media
• Who’s crushing it right now in progressive digital
• Why campaigns need to build relationships with creators and media early — not weeks before Election Day
• The role Twitch could (and maybe should) be playing in campaigns
• Why politics and culture aren’t separate — but rather one interwoven tapestry
• The biggest stories of the day that people aren’t paying attention to
• What the future of traditional media looks like
• The state of Kamala HQ — and where we go from here
• Why every department on a campaign needs a digital deputy at the table

Sadly something happened with my mic and my audio's not great. Fortunately, Lucy sounds amazing :)

Find links, transcript, more episodes and more at HelloMergeTag.com.

“One media company is now carrying ICE’s public image almost entirely on its shoulders…"

After analyzing 12 billion views across 90,019 videos posted in December and January, Drew Eldredge‑Martin of Ground Truth AI found that Fox News accounts for 70% of ALL views on YouTube tied to positive narratives about ICE — without Fox, the pro‑ICE narrative would nearly collapse.

In this episode of Hello Merge Tag, Drew breaks down what his narrative analysis reveals about who’s shaping the conversation, what content is actually driving attention, and what it means for campaigns in 2026.

We covered:

🔹 Why Fox News is driving both positive and negative ICE content

🔹 What types of videos are rising to the top of YouTube

🔹 The growing role of AI‑generated content in narrative shaping

🔹 Who the heck Benjamin is — and why he’s outperforming CNN on this topic

🔹 What sentiment data leading into Election Day tells us about the big 2025 campaigns

🔹 Why campaign teams need to pay even more attention to user‑generated content

🔹 And why you shouldn’t be sleeping on YouTube

If you want to understand how digital narratives actually map to influence — and what that means for politics, brands, and public opinion — this episode is a must‑catch.

🎧 FULL EPISODE, along with transcript, links, video version and more available at HelloMergeTag.com.