This Politician is Very Good at Social Media
An interview with Director of Communications for Council Member Chi Ossé, Elijah Fox.
Most politicians are very bad at social media.
So when my New York Link in Bio subscribers said I needed to interview whoever was behind Council Member Chi Ossé’s very good social presence, I was intrigued.
Of course, they were right. What I saw was a politician who clearly communicated initiatives through educational videos, timely memes, and community storytelling. Posts are filled with comments like, “This is more than I’ve seen any council member do for their constituents in a long time. 👏” and “how does it feel the be the only politician I genuinely like these days?!”
Today’s interview is with Director of Communications for Council Member Chi Ossé, Elijah Fox. He’s been with Chi since before his first campaign for City Council launched in 2020.
We talk about making a politician relatable (and working with one who already is), why he doesn’t mind that other politicians are biting their style, and how short-form video is the broadcast media of today.
Rachel Karten: First, can you tell me about your role?
Elijah Fox: I guess it's probably fair to say this is my first role, but the job has definitely evolved a lot.
I met Chi four years ago, a few days before his first campaign for City Council launched. I began running a wide range of communications and political strategy for the campaign. I was designing ads and messaging, writing long-form communications, managing our relationships with news media, and of course doing social media.
I should also shout out Ketia Jeune, who worked alongside me in campaign communications as Chi's publicist, managing relationships with more culture-oriented publications (where I would handle Politico, for example, she would handle Vogue).
After Chi took office, I came on as Director of Communications and political advisor, and continued to develop our social media to where it is today. Over the past year, I've pivoted our communications strategy toward video content.
RK: How would you describe Council Member Chi Ossé's social media strategy?
EF: I will do my best to answer this without revealing any trade secrets! We want people to enjoy our content—to find it genuinely entertaining so that they look forward to hearing from us, much as one looks forward to the weekly release of new television episodes.
At the same time, politics is very serious business. People's lives are impacted profoundly by the decisions of elected officials. The success of both our office and the broader political left in reducing poverty, combatting the housing crisis, protecting democracy, and a thousand other goals lies in the strength of our communications. We have to be fun; we also have to win.
"Make a politician feel relatable" is obviously a primary assignment of any communications team. I’m certainly lucky to work with a politician who already is. I work to make the world know who he is, like him, and support his agenda, by meeting each of our many audiences where they are.
RK: And how has the strategy evolved over time?
EF: Over the last year, we've made a strong push into short-form video content, which is obviously the medium of this era. TikTok and Instagram Reels are where younger people are getting most of their news. For as long as that's the case, it's our responsibility to publish on those platforms.
We make fun, high-speed content that people like to watch and that is easy to digest. We’ll take a complicated and or controversial topic, like the need to massively expand the housing stock to address the housing crisis, and condense enormous quantities of research into bite-sized pieces to inform our viewers. Whether the objective of a given video is to inform or persuade, we are a trusted source that anyone can appreciate and understand.
At the same time, traditional print and TV media remain deeply important. On the one hand, they still dominate with older audiences, and it’s important that we reach everyone. On the other hand, they serve as legitimizers. In the fully-democratized media landscape where anyone can be a TikTok creator and unverified assertions proliferate wildly, traditional outlets are a crucial anchor. I maintain relationships with these sources. Some of our strongest short-form videos are often clips of Chi on TV or walk-through videos explaining print newspaper stories.
RK: I am curious about your video strategy in particular. I've rarely seen a politician so effectively explain issues on social media. And, importantly, deliver the information in an actually entertaining way. Why is video such an important piece of Chi’s social strategy?
EF: A lot of time goes into each video, though it varies depending on the type. Take the data-driven videos like the ones on housing, for example. As part of my job as a communications director and political advisor, I read about housing every day and I’m often immersed in the ongoing housing debate that plays out with startling intensity on Twitter.
When the time comes to make the video I’ll spend a long time researching the specifics of the topic. Then I distill it to one or two dozen digestible lines and accompanying visuals.
I’m glad you think they are effective and funny—that’s so lovely to hear!
Video is important to our strategy because it’s how people get most of their information, and because it’s a way for building personal connections. People deserve to see and hear the ones representing them, and whose decisions have such profound impacts on their everyday lives.
An important balance we try to strike is between creating videos on what the public wants to see, and creating those on what we believe they ought to see. Sometimes we land on a topic that we don’t expect to necessarily perform the best, but that we think we need to inform or persuade about.
The overall strategy can probably be best described as mapping out a social media calendar designed to provide transparency and accountability in government on one end while advancing our political and policy agenda on the other.
RK: How much of your social strategy is reactive versus planned out days or weeks in advance? What’s your protocol for breaking news that affects your constituents (such as, for example, an earthquake)?
EF: I invest a great deal of time and energy into mapping out our grand communications strategy. That includes everything from very long-term—in an ongoing process I began during the first campaign three years ago—to the annual to seasonal and monthly plans. We have policies to enact, a brand to build, and a political landscape to influence, to whatever degree.
At the same time, one of my two cell phones is always on and I don’t remember the last time a week went by without some question or crisis springing up well after work hours. So it’s hard to give a clean answer to the first part of your question.
Breaking news is the territory of Twitter and traditional media interviews. Our videos are labor-intensive. We can give comprehensive recaps a couple days after the fact, but when something urgent happens I’ll be drafting statements and doing interview prep right away. Sometimes grave news requires that we be very serious. At other times, I like to make our responses funny and be clear that we can have a good time.
Generally, we have to blend being trustworthy, informative, persuasive, and fun.
Also, less glamorous but still important is maintaining a constant presence. Social media is how we communicate with the world in real time, and it’s also our public face that anyone can come visit at any time. Chi is incredibly active as an elected official, by any standard. Keeping a full Instagram and Twitter feed on our government accounts (as opposed to the more tailored, aesthetically-appealing personal/political accounts) is how we ensure that anyone interested in what Chi is up to can see that the answer is quite a lot.
RK: Can you walk me through the process of creating a video? How do you and Chi collaborate? Give me the nitty gritty. I really loved this one!
EF: People will often ask him or me something along the lines of, “How do you make those little videos? What’s your secret?” (Not saying that’s what you’re doing here! Just my thoughts on how to introduce my response to this question.) I think that TikTok developed a reputation as a sillier and more youthful medium, so there is sometimes an assumption that creating TikTok content is a quick and playful experience. To be clear, I have lots of fun doing it! We both do. But it’s also a decent amount of work.
I start off researching a topic, sometimes with the help of a research intern. I’ll then write out a too-long script and make a storyboard. I then edit down the script, and we go shoot the video. We usually make changes to the script and direction while we shoot, since it’s easier to get a sense for how it will feel once we’re running through the script. That G train video took several hours to shoot, but didn’t require much research since it was just an explainer of public information.
RK: Curious how your team is managing and thinking about the increasing limits on "political" content across the social networks?
EF: We haven’t noticed that affect us very much. My guess is that a lot of our content isn’t flagged as explicitly political, since it’s informing people on what’s happening around the city, but it’s definitely something we are keeping an eye on.
RK: What positive trends or outcomes do you see amongst younger, more socially active legislators/government officials? I think it's so easy to downplay the importance of social media in politics ("Do something and stop making silly little videos!" I imagine a boomer saying) when really it's such a powerful tool that all politicians have and should be taking advantage of.
EF: As a side note, I’ll say that while there is definitely a bias against social media because it feels more fun and juvenile, criticizing politicians for “doing too many interviews and not doing the work” is a storied American tradition dating back at least to the advent of television.
To answer your question, social media is easily among the most powerful elements in contemporary politics. That’s a pretty trite observation. But to go a little deeper, this (no longer super) new system of algorithm-based distribution is a complete paradigm shift. Where “going viral” used to refer to many people sharing a post to their followers, many of whom would then share it in turn, today, no sharing is necessary. An opaque set of metrics—how many likes or comments a post receives, how many seconds each viewer spent watching it, whether a viewer went to view comments even without leaving one of their own, etc.—now determines whether and with what intensity a platform will drop the post into our feeds. A well-made video on TikTok from an account with under 1,000 followers can be viewed a million times. It happens every day.
That explanation of course contains nothing new for you or any regular reader of your newsletter. I’m just taking a moment to marvel at the significance of the algorithm to frame my point: Mass communication has become democratized more than ever before. Anyone who skillfully builds content can reach audiences many times larger than their official following, and most consumers receive the majority of their content from accounts they do not follow.
In some ways, this has been disastrous, with misinformation and disinformation spreading further and more quickly than ever before. In other ways, this has been a miracle, with new ideas and people now able to break into the media ecosystem. But I won’t get too into the weeds about the pros and cons of these new social media platforms existing. They do; our job is to optimize for the world we live in.
Since our pivot to video, many other New York legislators have tried to adopt our style, to varying degrees of success. In some funnier cases, our videos are mimicked by other elected officials nearly shot-for-shot and even with the same sound effects. Not a week goes by without a friend or colleague sending me another politician’s videos and saying, “They’re biting your style!” I wondered at first if we should be annoyed, but ultimately, one of my strongest and most long standing complaints about government has always been its inability to talk to people effectively. I’m glad to see more elected officials and government agencies adopt communication methods that strengthen their relationships with the people they serve.
RK: What advice would you give an aspiring politician when it comes to how they should approach social media?
EF: First, find your personality. Politicians will often try to build a new, more appealing character of themselves for social media. This will usually feel unnatural and fail to inspire any followers. Outside of Chi, a great example of a social media success story is North Carolina Congressman Jeff Jackson. He built a brand as a sturdy, reliable adult who gives his followers a window into the opaque workings of Congress. His videos aren’t necessarily fun or youthful, but they fit him very well. He avoided the risk of becoming the Steve Buscemi “How do you do, fellow kids?” meme quite well.
Second, find your team. Talent is essential, but so is shared commitment to goals and values. Political mercenaries can only carry you so far. Pay your team well, and build your team out of people who are not there for the money.
Third, consider social media to be of equal or greater importance to other areas of communications. It can’t be neglected.
RK: I have one question for Chi! How does your use of social media help you connect with and understand your constituents? For example, I noticed a lot of people love using the comment section to suggest ideas or express their views—do those comments play a role in the issues you address?
Chi Ossé: It’s definitely the easiest way to connect directly with constituents en masse. And I love the comments! I’ll often respond directly, and they’re also always brought up alongside constituent service notes that come through phone calls or emails. Being active on social media is as much about reaching the people as it is about being reachable.
RK: Thanks for that! Any final thoughts, Elijah?
EF: Something I’ve been thinking for a while is that these short-form video platforms like TikTok and Instagram don’t really feel like social media. Most people aren’t posting or interacting with each other; they’re consuming. In that way, this all feels a lot more like traditional television: A small number of people or organizations create content and broadcast it, and everyone else consumes it. Gen-Z and Generation Alpha watch more of this content than they do Youtube or TV (that might be too for other generations I’m not sure). Short-form is the broadcast media of today, so success in this area will make or break a political candidate or movement.
I’m really proud of the communications apparatus we’ve built over the last four years, and especially this past year of adapting to a video-oriented world. I’m obviously biased because communications is my job and so much of my life, but I really do think it’s the most important component of politics.
Thank you for reading today’s interview! You can support free interviews like this one with a paid Link in Bio subscription! More details on that here. I should note it’s likely an educational expense at your company—here’s a template for you to use when asking your manager. See you next week!
Finally, there are some great new roles on the Link in Bio Job Board. Particularly intrigued by this TikTok Content Creator role at Quinn—the starting base salary is $135,000 FWIW. There are also roles at Gap, Notion, and more.
That’s my council member!!!!
👍