New York
Emilia Winter Rowland leads Zohran Mamdani’s influencer outreach
New York
Mamdani and the New Influencers of Power in New York
More than 250 creators in a private Signal group, direct access to the mayor, and paid partnerships with city agencies. New York is experimenting with a new model of government communication—one that blurs the lines between public information, political messaging and influencer culture.
The relationship between politics and the media in New York is undergoing a transformation that goes far beyond the rise of social media. At the center of this shift is Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Mayor who has made digital communication one of the defining tools of his political strategy. After building a network of online creators during his election campaign, his administration has brought many of those relationships into City Hall, involving influencers in the promotion of public initiatives and giving them opportunities to meet officials and gain direct access to the mayor. The result is a new model of political communication that is reshaping how government reaches the public while raising questions about the role of traditional journalism.
The first major sign came on January 7, 2026, during Mamdani's first week in office. At City Hall, the Mayor invited around 70 micro-influencers to an invitation-only, town hall-style meeting focused on his affordability agenda. The event, described by the administration as a new-media conference, brought together creators covering subjects ranging from parenting and health to food, sports, personal finance, comedy and everyday life across the city's five boroughs. They were not all high-profile personalities with millions of followers. Some were smaller creators with the ability to reach highly specific communities.
"There are so many New Yorkers for whom social media is the medium through which they understand not just their lives, but the struggles of their lives," Mamdani said. He made clear that traditional press briefings would continue but argued that City Hall also needed to communicate through the digital platforms residents use every day. That gathering was only the beginning. According to The New York Times, citing the mayor's team, City Hall has worked with more than 1,200 content creators since Mamdani took office. At the center of the effort is a private group on Signal, the encrypted messaging app, with more than 250 influencers, as well as smaller groups organized around specific topics. A separate study by Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism, published by the Columbia Journalism Review, compiled a list of 189 creators with ties to the administration. Researchers built that list using images of people who attended the January briefing, their social media activity and other publicly available information pointing to relationships with the city, including agency contracts. The figures describe different parts of the network, rather than competing estimates of its size.
The initiative is run by Emilia Rowland, the Mayor's Director of New Media and Cultural Communications, who developed Mamdani's influencer outreach model during the campaign. The Signal group, known as NYC Creators Announcements, grew out of Creators4Zohran, the network of digital supporters that helped spread his campaign message. Through the group, members receive daily updates, talking points, video clips, invitations to events and opportunities to interview city officials. Before joining, selected creators fill out a form describing where they live and the subjects they cover, allowing the administration to send them information and invitations tailored to their audiences. The mayor's office has not provided researchers with a list of the group's members.
The network is not simply a distribution channel for public announcements. A New York Times investigation documented how, in March, after the city canceled a $9 million contract with consulting firm McKinsey, Rowland's team sent guidance to hundreds of creators encouraging them to highlight the administration's claimed $1.7 billion in savings and contrast the decision with the previous administration's spending. The episode offered a concrete example of how government outreach can move beyond sharing information and become an effort to shape the way political decisions are presented online.
The strategy is part of a broader effort to communicate directly with residents. On May 21, Mamdani launched Talk With The People, a recurring livestream hosted on Twitch and distributed across platforms including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, X and Bluesky, as well as podcast services. The format is an explicit nod to Fiorello La Guardia, New York's Mayor in the 1930s and 1940s, who used his 1942 radio program, Talk to the People, to speak directly to residents. Today, viewers can submit questions in real time and receive answers from the mayor without having to wait for a press conference or a television interview.
There is also a practical reason behind this approach. In a city as linguistically and culturally diverse as New York, a digital creator who regularly speaks to immigrant communities, young parents or residents of a particular neighborhood can reach people who might otherwise never encounter an official government announcement. Sharing information about public services, tenants' rights and available assistance can therefore provide a genuine public benefit.
The use of influencers, however, did not begin with Mamdani. During the COVID-19 pandemic, New York City Health + Hospitals turned to celebrities and online creators to promote testing and vaccination. Its Test & Trace campaign involved 24 nano- and micro-influencers with a combined potential reach of approximately 12 million followers. In 2021, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority also enlisted New York-based creator New York Nico to recruit celebrities for public service announcements about behavior on the subway. What sets Mamdani's initiative apart is its scale and continuity: digital creators have become a permanent part of City Hall's communications strategy rather than occasional partners in individual campaigns.
Rowland and the Mayor's communications team have defended the approach by pointing to the decline of local newsrooms and the increasingly fragmented media landscape. Relying exclusively on traditional outlets, they argue, risks leaving a significant portion of the population unreached. But this is also where the most difficult questions emerge: a digital creator and a journalist may use the same platforms and reach audiences of comparable size without necessarily performing the same role.
A creator can be an effective communicator, an expert in a particular field or a trusted voice within a community. A journalist working for a news organization, however, also has a responsibility to scrutinize those in power, demand answers about government decisions and independently verify official accounts. This is not an absolute distinction. Some journalists work primarily through social media, while some creators produce rigorous reporting and investigations. The difference lies largely in professional responsibilities, editorial standards and the degree of independence from institutional sources.
The Columbia research highlights this distinction through interviews with creators involved in the network. Some describe their work as a form of public service, arguing that it allows them to distribute information that might otherwise fail to reach certain communities. Others insist on maintaining an independent relationship with the administration. Jose Vilson, an educator and activist, put it this way: "The majority of us don't want to just be associated with Zohran. We want to ask good questions because we care about the city."
The question of access nevertheless remains. When an administration organizes exclusive meetings, creates private groups and offers direct access to officials to a network of people outside traditional newsrooms, it is reasonable to ask how participants are selected. The New York Times reported that some creators were invited to events from which certain traditional reporters were excluded and that some received one-on-one interviews with the mayor. Social media reach, the ability to connect with specific communities and personal or political proximity to the administration may all influence who gets access. This does not mean that every creator involved is an unconditional supporter of Mamdani, but it makes transparency about the selection process essential.
The Mayor has rejected the suggestion that his strategy is intended to replace traditional journalism. On September 4, responding to questions about the use of influencers, he described journalists as a critical part of the "fourth estate," emphasizing their role in holding government accountable. He also said that meetings and interviews with digital creators were never contingent on contracts or financial agreements with his office.
Mamdani has argued that the material sent to influencers is essentially the same information distributed through the administration's regular press list: announcements, updates on city initiatives and links to official broadcasts. He cited investigative journalist Pablo Torre, whose reporting on the Los Angeles Clippers he said had led to a $30 million NBA fine, as an example of how significant journalism can emerge outside traditional newsrooms. In the Mayor's view, the platforms through which people work should not determine whether their reporting is taken seriously.
The debate has also shifted to the management of official communications. The private Signal group for influencers had been configured to automatically delete messages after a certain period, raising concerns about the preservation of public records and compliance with government transparency rules.
After the issue came to light, City Hall said it had taken corrective action. On September 4, Chief Counsel Ramzi Kassem said staff had been reminded to disable disappearing messages and that the administration would continue reviewing the matter. But the September 22 City Council hearing revealed a more complicated picture. A January 2026 memorandum from the Mayor's Chief Counsel, entered into the hearing record, instructed staff not to use Signal, WhatsApp or other messaging platforms for work. Kassem had previously explained that exceptions could be authorized, provided employees complied with record-retention requirements and disabled automatic deletion. At the hearing, officials did not clarify whether the influencer group had received specific authorization.
The hearing also exposed uncertainty over what must be preserved. Under the city's May 2025 instant-messaging policy, text and Signal messages are considered transitory by default and have no automatic retention requirement. If an employee determines that a message is substantive because it documents or relates to a government decision, action or policy, that employee is responsible for transferring it to a format suitable for long-term storage. Officials from the Department of Records and Information Services could not determine whether messages in the influencer group fell into that category or whether any substantive communications had been deleted.
The hearing, convened by the City Council's Committee on Governmental Operations, also examined proposed legislation on the disclosure of government-funded social media communications. Rowland, the official identified as overseeing the network, did not appear despite being invited to testify. The administration sent other officials, who were unable to answer several questions about the group's selection process, its management and the overall spending on influencer campaigns. The hearing left important issues unresolved, including whether the group had been properly authorized and how the city intended to ensure that official communications remained accessible.
There is also a financial dimension that requires distinguishing the Signal group from separate paid partnerships arranged by individual city agencies. Creators are not paid simply for joining the network or covering City Hall activities. According to the Columbia research, New York City agency employees described typical payments of between $5,000 and $20,000 per influencer campaign. The money is paid through marketing and advertising firms contracted by the city, and the campaigns can involve creators producing content that incorporates messages the agencies want to promote.
These initiatives cover public services, health campaigns, tenants' rights and civic participation. They are not equivalent to paying influencers to politically support Mamdani, but they raise a transparency issue. The researchers found that procurement notices do not always identify the creators involved and that disclosure practices for sponsored content are inconsistent. As a result, audiences may not always be able to distinguish an independently produced post from content funded with public money.
One example comes from the New York City Campaign Finance Board, an independent, nonpartisan agency responsible for overseeing campaign finance and providing election information. In 2025, it worked with 29 influencers during the election cycle, generating more than 70 posts on Instagram and TikTok at a total cost of $626,365. According to testimony presented to the City Council, the posts generated more than six million views and over 500,000 engagements. Content produced in Spanish, Korean and Bengali also generated more than 400,000 visits to the agency's voter information website. The program is separate from Mamdani's political communications network and operates under specific nonpartisan rules, including contractual restrictions on endorsing or opposing candidates.
New York's experiment reflects a wider transformation in American politics. At the federal level, President Donald Trump's White House has developed its own digital communications operation, with behind-the-scenes content produced by presidential aides and amplified by a network of conservative influencers and political personalities. Mamdani's approach is different: it relies more heavily on local creators who speak to specific communities and distribute information about city services and policies. The two models are not identical, but both demonstrate how central digital intermediaries have become to the way political leaders communicate with the public.
Ultimately, the issue is not about pitting newspapers against social media or treating every influencer as a propaganda tool. Digital platforms can broaden participation and bring government closer to people who have long remained on the margins of public debate. But that opening cannot turn into a system in which access to those in power depends on a willingness to participate in their communications strategy.
Mamdani's experiment highlights a challenge that democracies will increasingly have to confront distinguishing a government's ability to communicate directly with the public from its responsibility to answer for its decisions. Reaching millions of people through a video may be a major achievement in political communication, but it is not the same as providing them with independent information. A democracy is measured not only by how many people it can reach, but also by the freedom of those whose job is to hold its leaders accountable.
