{"id":1105,"date":"2026-04-07T07:39:39","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T07:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gold-tapir-911468.hostingersite.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/07\/tips-for-investigating-right-wing-influencers-and-podcasters\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T06:38:45","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T06:38:45","slug":"tips-for-investigating-right-wing-influencers-and-podcasters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the-secularist.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/07\/tips-for-investigating-right-wing-influencers-and-podcasters\/","title":{"rendered":"Tips for Investigating Right-Wing Influencers and Podcasters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by <a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/gijn.org\/staff-member\/rowan-philp\/\">Rowan Philp <\/a>for Global Investigative Journalism Network\u2022 April 1, 2026<\/p>\n<p>They target an audience of young men, and they are increasingly helping to turn far-right grievances into policy.<\/p>\n<aside>&#8220;In most of these markets people also say they pay more attention to creators and influencers than to mainstream news brands (or their journalists) when using social media.\u201d \u2014 <a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk\/news-creators-influencers\/2025\/mapping-news-creators-and-influencers-social-and-video-networks\">Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism report<\/a><\/aside>\n<p>In recent years, longform right-leaning podcasts have attracted vast, largely male audiences and advertising revenue, and have been credited with helping authoritarian candidates win elections and find support for repressive policies \u2014 most notably, the US election of Donald Trump in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, data journalists are <a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/graphics\/2025-conservative-youtube-stars-marketing-boom\/\">tracking how right-leaning influencers are fueling an advertising boom<\/a> in which businesses leverage the ideological slant of their shows to sell politically-coded products, in a lucrative ecosystem for the hosts, brands, and platforms. By contrast, they report that left-leaning podcasts have not pursued ideological marketing in the same way.<\/p>\n<p>Overall, news influencers of all stripes have an outsized impact on public opinion in several regions of the world, as a recent Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism <a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk\/news-creators-influencers\/2025\/mapping-news-creators-and-influencers-social-and-video-networks\">report<\/a> noted: \u201cThere is a set of markets including Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and the United States (as well as Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa) where news creators are having a very significant impact. In most of these markets people also say they pay more attention to creators and influencers than to mainstream news brands (or their journalists) when using social media.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But, so far, right-wing podcasters in the United States have moved public opinion more than their peers in any other society. As Bloomberg pointed out, it is significant that popular podcaster Joe Rogan, a former comedian, was invited to watch the Trump inauguration from the prestigious Capitol rotunda, while well-known Republican governor Ron DeSantis was confined to overflow seating. Meanwhile, a <a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/investigations\/trump-20-maga-aligned-influencers-media-emerge-new-mainstream-2025-11-08\/\">recent Reuters analysis<\/a> of podcasts and shows from 22 conservative influencers revealed remarkably consistent messaging between hosts with otherwise diverse backgrounds, and \u201chave become a potent force in a widening campaign of retribution against perceived enemies of the Trump administration.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Journalists have found this right-wing cohort\u2019s influence difficult to track, partly due to the loss of effective network analysis tools such as Crowdtangle, their shows\u2019 hours-long duration across multiple platforms, and the seemingly wild diversity of topics discussed. Factual discussions of black holes with real astronomers are sometimes followed by fanciful \u201cfacts\u201d about UFOs from comedians, while conspiracy theories and \u201cmanosphere\u201d grievances are often floated alongside praise for Western civilization and scorn for transgender identity. And many of these influence voters far beyond their own borders, while hosts \u201ctout products that <a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/graphics\/2025-conservative-youtube-stars-marketing-boom\/\">let people buy into the MAGA crowd<\/a>,\u201d according to a recent Bloomberg investigation.<\/p>\n<p>In a session titled \u201cTips to Investigate Influencers and Livestreamers\u201d at the recent <a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/schedules.ire.org\/nicar-2026\/\">NICAR data journalist summit<\/a>, Bloomberg investigative data journalist <a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/leony1n\/\">Leon Yin<\/a> shared techniques learned from his 2025 <a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/graphics\/2025-youtube-podcast-men-for-trump\/\">investigation into nine influencers<\/a> who helped usher in the far-right Trump administration. Yin\u2019s story showed how these podcasters \u201care mobilizing America\u2019s men to lean right,\u201d with common claims about the public being duped by established institutions, and common warnings about apocalyptic threats to personal liberty.<\/p>\n<p>While many supposed that guests on these shows were dominated by right wing politicians, Bloomberg\u2019s analysis of the podcasts revealed a surprising and common cocktail: lots of comedians, athletes, intellectuals, and military veterans, in consistent ratios that allow reporters to place individual podcasters into distinct influencer categories. However, Yin said the most pervasive topics throughout included transgender identity and sports participation, immigration, and supposed flaws in the election system.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAbout four in ten\u2026 of the most frequently viewed videos mentioned voting or elections, with the intensity increasing as you got closer to the election,\u201d he explained. \u201cSurprisingly, there was a 50-50 split \u2014 half of these videos are used to endorse candidates or suggest people register, and about half are discrediting or disparaging of the democratic process. About three in ten videos mentioned transgender identity. Often sports are involved as a major subtopic, and this phrase \u2018men playing in women\u2019s sports\u2019 was repeated all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yin said tracking the virality of right wing podcasts is extremely difficult since Meta killed off the Crowdtangle analysis tool in 2024. As a result he urged reporters to consider an alternate approach for tracking this group\u2019s influence: by mapping the guests on these shows, and analyzing what was said within their unfiltered, conversational content.<\/p>\n<aside>\u201cWhy focus on YouTube? It\u2019s the largest pod[cast] distributor in the world.&#8221; \u2014 Bloomberg investigative data journalist Leon Yin<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cWhen reporting on videos, you have to just know that Crowdtangle is never coming back,\u201d Yin explained. \u201cWith that tool, you could put in a link, and see where it was shared elsewhere on social media. Nothing like that exists at present. There is no overview of how often or where things are shared. Instead, I look at the influencers and the megaphones, because that data continues to exist. Their broadcasts are readily available, and often archived.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The key, he added, is to be organized, and to define your own categories, and explain your choices to your audience. For instance, for the Bloomberg investigation, Yin explained the selection criteria to audiences to show why he eventually analyzed 2,000 shows from those nine podcasts over a two-year period: they were all unedited interview-format podcasts with at least one million YouTube subscribers, which had also featured at least one interview with then-candidate Trump.<\/p>\n<p>While there are numerous podcast platforms, Yin said YouTube was generally the best place to start.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhy focus on YouTube? It\u2019s the largest pod[cast] distributor in the world,\u201d he noted. \u201cIt is the distribution hub, it is used to grow audiences, and it has an archive of all the videos uploaded, unless deleted for some reason.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In addition, most YouTube podcasts conveniently archive all channel content under the \u201cVideos\u201d section of their channels (see below).<\/p>\n<p>Yin said the following tools were key to his team\u2019s podcast investigations:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/podscribe.com\/\"><b>Podscribe<\/b><\/a> \u2014 a paid-for podcast advertising analytics platform.<\/li>\n<li><a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"http:\/\/stacher.io\/\"><b>Stacher.io<\/b><\/a> \u2014 a graphical user interface tool that simplifies the video downloading process, and does not require command-line skills<\/li>\n<li><a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/reduct.video\/\"><b>Reduct<\/b><\/a> \u2014 a paid transcription service that allows the annotation of specific podcast clips, and which Yin said is helpful for content-heavy video investigations.<\/li>\n<li>Transcription tools such as those from Google NotebookLM and <a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.whispertranscribe.com\/\"><b>Whisper<\/b><\/a>. Yin focused on the 600 videos with over one million views, and used keyword search of the transcripts, followed by manual verification. (GIJN has also profiled the <a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/gijn.org\/stories\/gijn-top-investigative-tools-2025\/\"><b>Summarize.Tech<\/b><\/a> timeline-based transcriber, which allows some free uploads.)<\/li>\n<li>And, above all: <a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/yt-dlp\/yt-dlp\"><b>yt-dlp<\/b><\/a> \u2014 a free, all-purpose command-line audio and video downloader tool.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<aside>\u201cYt-dlp is a fantastic tool; it\u2019s a free, open source package, and you can download videos from basically any website.&#8221; \u2014 Tristan Lee<\/aside>\n<p>Notably \u2014 with journalist concerns about potential legal challenges from platforms over copyright and policy conflicts \u2014 one common tip heard in the hallways at NICAR was for reporters to use the open source yt-dlp software while it still remains available.<\/p>\n<p><a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/trislee\/\">Tristan Lee<\/a>, co-founder of Decoherence Media and a leading far-right groups investigator, said: \u201cYt-dlp is a fantastic tool; it\u2019s a free, open source package, and you can download videos from basically any website. And the real killer application here is that you can download every single video from, say, a given YouTube or TikTok account with a single command. This is so useful for archiving, because once things get spicy, it\u2019s common for people to take down their spicy videos.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, for more targeted projects, Yin said newsrooms might consider the easier-to-use Stacher tool.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s a user interface that\u2019s helpful not only for downloading YouTube videos, but videos on many websites, and it runs on top of this command line tool yt-dlp,\u201d he explained. \u201cI used both of them, but I use Stacher as a one-off, and yt-dlp if I\u2019m trying to programmatically collect stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yin said audience comments that run below influencer videos also represented a rich source of data.<\/p>\n<p>For scraping websites, Lee made a rare recommendation for a paid-for tool \u2014 <a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/serpapi.com\/?gad_source=1&amp;gad_campaignid=1061187028&amp;gbraid=0AAAAADD8kqNsUqatl0udITNixal9uiFRh&amp;gclid=CjwKCAjw1N7NBhAoEiwAcPchp-2R258_1MZ1_h06Ccyey1b4PmlLPDb_VVXFan93rNX2BysXtsnIVxoCGuUQAvD_BwE\">SerpAPI<\/a>, a proprietary scraper for Google services and other platforms. \u201cIn many cases, it is much faster and easier to pay a small amount of money, or use a free tier version of a paid tool that actually works, rather than making your own or finding a janky [open source] tool on GitHub,\u201d Lee said. \u201cI looked for good Google Reviews scrapers, and none worked, and I can recommend this one.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Notably, the session also highlighted an advanced, free-access data journalism tutorials portal for digging into the influencer advertising ecosystem, gambling livestreamers, and other \u201copaque topics.\u201d The tool, called <a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"http:\/\/inspectelement.org\/\"><b>inspectelement.org<\/b><\/a>, was created by Yin with contributions by <a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sapiezynski.com\/\">Piotr Sapiezynski<\/a> and other collaborators.<\/p>\n<p>One of the techniques described on the site explains how to find hidden data from \u201cundocumented APIs\u201d \u2014 what Yin describes as the \u201cdigital bureaucracy\u201d behind servers. This approach emerged as a trending data-digging technique among speakers at NICAR, and was used by Lighthouse Reports, for instance, for its <a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lighthousereports.com\/investigation\/surveillance-secrets\/\">recent investigation<\/a> into phone tracking software, as <a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/gijn.org\/resource\/tech-focus-project-investigating-location-tracking-surveillance\/\">GIJN described<\/a> in March. This data mining process generally involves some computer science skills, but Inspect Element\u2019s <a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/inspectelement.org\/apis.html#tutorial\">excellent tutorial on undocumented APIs<\/a> shows how to reverse-engineer these systems to find hidden information without the need for coding. Despite the advanced digital steps required for each technique, the site includes metaphorical explainers understandable for non-coders, as well as strong <a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/inspectelement.org\/browser_automation.html#case-studies\">case studies<\/a> and tips for building datasets.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/gijn.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/foto_Rowan-Philp.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"153\" height=\"153\" \/><a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/gijn.org\/staff-member\/rowan-philp\/\"><b><i>Rowan Philp<\/i><\/b><\/a> <i>is GIJN\u2019s global reporter and impact editor. He was formerly chief reporter for South Africa\u2019s<\/i> <a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.timeslive.co.za\/sunday-times\/\"><i>Sunday Times<\/i><\/a><i>. As a foreign correspondent, he has reported on news, politics, corruption, and conflict from more than two dozen countries around the world.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>This <a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/gijn.org\/stories\/tips-investigating-right-wing-influencers-podcasters\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">article<\/a> first appeared on <a style=\"color: blue;\" href=\"https:\/\/gijn.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Global Investigative Journalism Network<\/a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" id=\"republication-tracker-tool-source\" src=\"https:\/\/gijn.org\/?republication-pixel=true&amp;post=657947&amp;ga=UA-21528033-17\" \/><\/p>\n<figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/the-secularist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/336x336-staff-profile-photo-Rowan-Philp.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"336\" height=\"336\" \/><\/figure>\n<h3><a style=\"font-size: 14px; font-family: georgia;\" href=\"https:\/\/gijn.org\/staff-member\/rowan-philp\/\">Rowan Philp<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>Global Reporter and Impact Editor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cIn most of these markets people also say they pay more attention to creators and influencers than to mainstream news brands (or their journalists) when using social media.\u201d \u2014 Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism report<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1133,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,19],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1105","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-article","8":"category-latest-stories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-secularist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-secularist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-secularist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-secularist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-secularist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1105"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/the-secularist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1134,"href":"https:\/\/the-secularist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1105\/revisions\/1134"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-secularist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the-secularist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-secularist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the-secularist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}