It’s all fake – nano-influencers and their paid campaigns to stroke political egos

Daily Maverick has identified at least five different political campaigns running on X in April seemingly being driven by people paid to post.

When Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana announced on 24 April that the VAT hike was being scrapped, almost all political parties scrambled to take credit. Although it seemed clear that the DA and EFF’s court action was really the death-knell for the tax increase, in the days that followed you might never have guessed that from social media.

X was flooded with posts thanking ActionSA for having stopped the VAT increase. “Now VAT increase remains suspended and this wouldn’t be possible without ActionSA!” one crowed.

Of course, some of those posting would have been legitimate ActionSA voters expressing appreciation for their party. But when Daily Maverick took a closer look at the tweeting, certain features emerged – in particular, a relatively small number of accounts relentlessly tweeting on one subject on a certain day and interacting with each other’s tweets on the same topic to amplify them. These are the telltale signs of an orchestrated campaign.

One of the accounts we studied, @Hlumelomdiza, posted about ActionSA stopping the VAT hike no fewer than 125 times between 24 and 26 April. 

ActionSA denies using these “nano-influencers” to tweet. Yet one online gun-for-hire contacted by Daily Maverick pointed to his ActionSA tweets as an example of the paid work he has undertaken in the past.

Digital consultancy Murmur Intelligence has been tracking the rise of paid-for political discourse on South African social media for some time. Researchers Kyle Findlay, Tabelo Timse and Aldu Cornelissen have written previously that the concern is that many users will not realise these posts are not organic expressions of political solidarity.

Read more: Influence-for-hire trend is distorting public discourse, poses threat to foundations of democracy

“These users trust the content the influencers share, unaware that much of it is part of carefully crafted, paid campaigns,” they wrote. “Behind the scenes, political parties and interest groups invest millions to manipulate public discourse, distorting the democratic process and shaping voter perceptions with endorsements that are anything but authentic.”

The researchers have found that a client like a political party typically approaches an agency with a particular message to be spread. The agency then briefs “mega-influencers” (with more than a million followers), who then delegate the task to their own network of “nano-influencers” (with less than 1,000 followers) or “micro-influencers” (1,000-99,999 followers).

These small-scale influencers are then paid small amounts of money for their tweeting, often by e-wallet. Findlay told Daily Maverick this week that Murmur has found that nano-­influencers are generally paid between R50 and R250 for their “engagement tasks”, with micro-influencers able to take home a few thousand rand.

A number of those accounts seemingly participating in the ActionSA VAT campaign openly advertise their availability for “promotions” in their bios. Daily Maverick contacted a number of them without success –until we posed as a client in need of services.

A micro-influencer with 19,500 followers, who has not given permission to be named, was quick to respond to an email inquiry about rates for a potential political campaign on social media.

“I have a team for you so that [we] can pull this together and we engage with each other’s tweets to get those numbers,” he said.

For R5,000, he promised us “20 influencers with more than 10k followers”, with a more specific fee dependent on whether we wanted “a trend [a topic on X’s trending list] or awareness”.

Asked if he would have to disclose anywhere in his tweets that they were paid for, he replied: “Only influencers know [it’s] a paid gig not everyone knows what’s really going on [on] X”.

As evidence of the kind of campaigns in which he has participated in the past, he sent us tweets from a number of different accounts – all controlled by him.

“So if Godongwana is really withdrawing from that VAT rates it means ActionSA was really right,” one read.

“Now VAT increase remains suspended and this wouldn’t be possible without ActionSA,” read another.

ActionSA spokesperson Matthew George told Daily Maverick this week: “ActionSA does not employ paid influencers,” adding it simply pays to boost ads on social media.

“As part of our broader digital communications platform, we do allocate resources towards social media advertising to enhance the reach and visibility of our message.”

Asked whether it was possible that the social media agencies the party works with could be employing paid influencers to spread a pro-­ActionSA message, George did not respond.

ActionSA’s denials are not surprising: no political party, it seems, is willing to admit it uses these tactics. Indeed, the denials go all the way down the chain.

Read more: Unseen foot soldiers — how naïve nano influencers boost paid political campaigns

Daily Maverick’s micro-influencer told us that he gets these gigs through working with four social media agencies. Contacted for comment, three agencies denied ever doing political work; the fourth did not respond.

But it is clear that ActionSA’s is not the only game in town. Daily Maverick found suggestions of at least four other paid-for local political campaigns on X in April alone. 

Pro-Mashatile campaign

Deputy Presi­dent Paul Ma­­sha­­tile “soft launched” his campaign to be ANC president on Tuesday, 22 April, at a commemorative Soweto gathering to honour uMkhonto weSizwe combatants. Attending the event, News24 reported, were people carrying banners reading “Mashatile iThemba Lethu” (Mashatile our hope).

“Although Mashatile denied campaigning,” News24 wrote, “#MashatileIthemba­Lethu was trending on X [that] afternoon”.

Daily Maverick asked Findlay and Murmur to take a look at the hashtag this week.

Murmur’s analysis revealed a “single network of paid influencers – or ‘buzzers’ (i.e., users single-mindedly focused on reposting specific users to a far greater extent than would normally be expected)” who likely worked on the Mashatile campaign.

ANC culture frowns upon early overt campaigning for the leadership. Mashatile’s spokesperson, Keith Khoza, told Daily Maverick: “The DP [deputy president] was never involved in any campaign and therefore did not need to engage influencers.”

Yet the Mashatile online campaign was not subtle. Daily Maverick identified at least 15 accounts tweeting repeatedly in support of Mashatile only on 22 April. One, @arena_maz, tweeted at least 59 times about Mashatile on that day.

Other campaigns for ANC politicians

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