Welcome to The Phoenix’s weekly digest. Every week during the quarter, you can expect our writers’ takes on some campus happenings.

This week, August Beaudreau offers insight into a social media-driven USG election, won by the party that used it least.

Throughout April, the USG election gripped campus for the first time in a long time: two debates, scores of sidechat posts, and a turnout of twenty-six percent—double that of last year. Yet, after all this, the perceived incumbents emerged victorious. 

Much of the buzz can be attributed to the tireless social media campaigns of the Ida Noyes, New Generation, and Premium parties. The three parties amassed substantial followings of more or less four figures within a month. Between them, they made 98 posts in the same period. As the election unfolded,  I watched my feed transition from ice hockey edits to a barrage of interview clips, candidate profiles, and trend-mocking reels filmed around campus. These posts often did quite well, garnering thousands of views and hundreds of interactions. 

The volume of social media content mobilized a spike in voter turnout, but seemingly did not help the parties orchestrating it. While more people “went to the polls,” their votes did not go to the most active parties online. 

Ultimately, it was the CORE Collective and their 445-person-strong Instagram following that swept the board. Not only was their following lower, but they posted the least of any party. Compare CORE’s twenty posts of all formats to New Generation’s thirty reels alone. Additionally, CORE’s content was largely informational, with eleven of their twenty posts being endorsements or candidate introductions. Granted, CORE Collective’s Instagram presence was not entirely devoid of entertaining reels (one video of its cabinet candidates pouring water over the head of USG President-elect Kevin Guo comes to mind), but they gave little indication they were trying to maximize engagement. 

Despite the CORE Collective’s eventual triumph—winning sixty-four percent of final-round voting—it would be wrong to say outright that the other three campaigns were mistaken to invest heavily in social media. Without these efforts, far fewer people would likely have ever known who they were. But there was quite a gulf between getting views and earning votes. All press is, perhaps, not good press. The defeated parties’ attempts to mobilize voters may have pushed as many people to CORE as they brought in.

Why? A deeper skepticism among UChicago voters that perhaps no amount of creative Instagram reels could penetrate. Most people think USG’s reach is quite limited. Ideas like “saving the pub”  or contracting a fleet of party buses may have appealed to students to a certain degree. But the parties that promoted them, however many times they explained their plans, inevitably faced the gut reaction:  “Sure, but USG can’t actually do any of that.” Hence, the defeated parties had to walk a tightrope of simultaneously advocating for policies bold enough to generate enthusiasm without compromising their seriousness in the eyes of the voter. 

This is not to say that CORE lacked a vision for change, but rather that they succeeded in branding themselves as experienced, professional, and pragmatic. The changes they advocated for fell squarely within what the student body would view as conventionally feasible. “Maroon dollars for laundry” may not fire people up like “Save the pub,” but it does convey a certain staidness. Judging by the relative lack of social media content put out by the CORE campaign, it seems they were aware of this perspective among students. They did not need to go out, get a thousand followers, and inundate social media feeds with attention-grabbing content based on far-reaching ideas. CORE’s strategy suggests an astute awareness that they were the reliable choice.

Perhaps, then, each campaign played its hand about as well as it could. The defeats of the Ida Noyes, New Generation, and Premium parties are not an indictment of their respective social media strategies but rather a reflection of the realities of USG politicking. Aggressive social media campaigns were a necessary gambit used by the upstart parties to try to establish themselves amongst the student body. But it was exactly their excesses in promoting ambitious policies in glitzy short-form videos that ironically cemented CORE as the “adult” choice. 

Stay tuned for next week’s edition. In the meantime, if you have any thoughts, disagreements, or words of support, we want to hear them! Write to us at thechicagophoenix@gmail.com.