TY - JOUR A1 - Gibson, Rachel A1 - Bon, Esmeralda A1 - Darius, Philipp A1 - Smyth, Peter T1 - Are Online Political Influencers Accelerating Democratic Deconsolidation? JF - Media and Communication N2 - Social media campaigning is increasingly linked with anti-democratic outcomes, with concerns to date centring on paid adverts, rather than organic content produced by a new set of online political influencers. This study systematically compares voter exposure to these new campaign actors with candidate-sponsored ads, as well as established and alternative news sources during the US 2020 presidential election. Specifically, we examine how far higher exposure to these sources is linked with key trends identified in the democratic deconsolidation thesis. We use data from a national YouGov survey designed to measure digital campaign exposure to test our hypotheses. Findings show that while higher exposure to online political influencers is linked to more extremist opinions, followers are not disengaging from conventional politics. Exposure to paid political ads, however, is confirmed as a potential source of growing distrust in political institutions. Y1 - 2023 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-hsog/frontdoor/index/index/docId/5050 SN - 2183-2439 U6 - https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v11i3.6813 VL - 11 IS - 3 ER -