Elon Musk is now unquestionably the king of MAGA media.
Tech journalist Charlie Warzel once named it “the new media Upside Down”, riffing on Stranger Things. Sean Illing at Vox referred to it as “the fantasy-industrial complex”. Wikipedia simply calls it the “right-wing alternative media”.
To Musk, a born-again MAGA crusader who has spent the last two years reshaping one of the world’s major social networks in his image, this parallel universe of algorithm-aided disinformation is simply “citizen journalism” — even if his description does sound a lot like traditional journalism.
And after Donald Trump’s victory this week, the MAGA media universe might just be the new mainstream media.
“The reality of this election was plain to see on X, while most legacy media lied relentlessly to the public,” the mega-billionaire told his 203m followers on Wednesday morning. “You are the media now.”
Tuesday’s result was a testament to the enduring power of that ecosystem. While “legacy” newspapers and TV networks reported on Donald Trump’s criminal convictions and alleged plots to overthrow the 2020 election, his cult of personality has persisted through a whole other world of partisan news outlets, merchandise-hawking online influencers, and outright cults dedicated to his glory.
Yet since Trump himself was booted from mainstream social networks in January 2021, there’s been no one at the apex of this pyramid. That is, until this year.
“It was Trump, and now it’s Musk,” says Mike Rothschild, a journalist and author of the 2022 book The Storm Is Upon Us about the QAnon conspiracy movement. “Musk really has taken over the role of chief s***poster, and he loves it.”
Now, with Trump on his way to the White House, Musk’s $44bn purchase of Twitter two years ago – and, experts allege, his efforts to transform it into a pro-Trump propaganda machine – give him enormous influence over the movement.
“What this does is puts him basically at the elbow of the president-elect of the United States,” says Rothschild. “It puts him at the levers of power with a president who is kind of beholden to him, at least for now.”
The Independent has asked Elon Musk and X for comment.
Long before the 2024 election, conservative journalists and activists had spent years building their own media ecosystem. Ronald Reagan’s deregulation of the TV airwaves created partisan networks like Fox News, and new generations have followed their example in the online age.
“We’ve really created parallel institutions,” conservative media entrepreneur Mike Cernovich told BuzzFeed News in 2017. “Trump supporters didn’t think they were being treated fairly or accurately by the media… and so we created the answer.”
Meanwhile, as a tech reporter for the UK’s Daily Telegraph, I watched conspiracist communities and far right extremists flourish on big social networks such as Facebook and Instagram, aided by the companies’ own algorithmic recommendation engines.
