Mayor Zohran Mamdani Taps Army of 200-Plus Influencers to Spread City Hall Message

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has built a sprawling network of more than 200 social media influencers who receive talking points, video clips and access to city officials to help spread his administration’s message online.

According to a Columbia Journalism Review report published Monday, August 31, the 34-year-old mayor’s administration has increasingly turned to TikTok and Instagram creators to promote everything from pre-K and infrastructure projects to bike lanes, healthcare, voting and composting.

At the center of the network is a private Signal group called NYC Creators Announcements, which grew out of Creators4Zohran, a group that supported Mamdani’s mayoral campaign, per the report.

According to the outlet, the Signal group is run by Emilia Rowland, the mayor’s director of new media and cultural communications. Members receive daily updates, talking points and clips they can use in their posts, while also receiving invitations to events and opportunities to interview city officials.

Influencers interviewed for the report said more than 200 creators are part of the group, ranging from accounts with 5,000 to 10,000 followers to influencers with audiences in the millions. Researchers were able to identify 189 influencers with ties to the Mamdani administration by examining attendees at a January press briefing, social media posts and publicly available information about city contracts and other relationships, according to the article.

The influencers aren’t necessarily being paid to promote Mamdani. Members of the Signal group do not receive money from the city simply for covering his administration, according to the report, although some influencers are paid by individual city agencies to participate in specific messaging campaigns.

Those payments can be substantial. According to the Columbia Journalism Review, New York City agency employees said that influencers can receive between $5,000 and $20,000 per campaign. The money is paid through marketing and advertising agencies contracted by the city, and campaigns can involve creators working with officials on content containing messages the city wants to promote.

Officials argued that using influencers can be a cheaper and more effective way of reaching New Yorkers than traditional advertising.

“Spending fifty thousand dollars on influencers gets you ten influencers who can replicate the message, while fifty thousand dollars on a TV ad is only one or two ads, and you cannot be sure anyone sees them, so talking about the math, that is the way to go. And once Mamdani won, he elevated all of this, and that is where we are today,” José Bayona, former executive director of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Ethnic and Community Media, said, per the report.

“The Mayor’s office has never paid a content creator for a collaboration or for content production,” a City Hall spokesperson tells Globe.

Some creators also see their work with the administration as a public service rather than simply promotion. “The majority of us don’t want to just be associated with Zohran,” influencer and education activist Jose Vilson said, per the report. “We want to ask good questions because we care about the city.”

But the growing network has raised questions about where government messaging ends and independent social media content begins, particularly when taxpayer money is involved. And the report found that disclosure of paid partnerships is inconsistent across city agencies and influencer campaigns.

One communications staffer explained why influencer content can be particularly effective advertising. “If we’re boosting a video of an influencer talking to a camera, people are more likely to stop and watch without realizing it’s an ad,” the staffer said, per the report. “It’s a little sneaky, but that’s the idea.”

The researchers argued that New York needs clearer rules governing the rapidly expanding relationships between government and social media creators, particularly when money changes hands.

“This is the Wild West right now, and people are coming up with the rules themselves,” Sari Beth Rosenberg, a history teacher and digital content strategist for the American Federation of Teachers union, said, according to the article. “I truly believe there need to be standards and federal policy around this. There are so many loopholes.”

The report also warned that influencers who benefit from their relationships with the city could potentially be mobilized to support political candidates or campaigns in the future, adding another concern to the increasingly blurred line between government communication, advertising and political influence.