If you want to know how this election season turned out the way it has, you can learn a lot from the brief history of a little startup called Instagram.
Yes, Instagram.
Co-founders Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom launched the photo sharing app in late 2010. Within two years, Facebook acquired it for $1 billion, leaving its 13 employees and a slate of investors to split a substantial fortune.
That same year, Kodak filed for bankruptcy. Instagram's analog rival, founded in 1888, once employed as many as 145,000 people. It endured the Great Depression, the Great Recession, and two world wars. But it couldn’t compete against the digital revolution that propelled the likes of Instagram.
The Internet and other emerging technologies have changed the US economy clearly and irreversibly as they automate and obviate career paths that sustained generations. That understandably frustrates the people who find themselves on the wrong side of that rift. And frustration defines the dynamics of this election---frustration with the rise of Chinese manufacturing, with Wall Street corruption, with a campaign finance system that lets party elites call the shots, and with an economy that doesn't reward the same skills it did a decade or more ago.
This frustration has fueled the success of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, populists who---each in his own ideologically distinct way---have risen to prominence by speaking to the enraged Americans affected by this economic disruption. The story of Instagram’s rise and Kodak’s fall, with 13 millionaires minted overnight and more than 100,000 jobs lost, underscores why that tactic works.
Major technological shifts have bred frustration throughout history, of course, but this shift is unique. Instagram is more than a new technology. It’s a new communications technology, one of several putting power in the hands of the people.
“It’s not just another shift in technology that creates economic angst and energy for change,” says Joe Trippi, former presidential campaign manager for Howard Dean. “This one empowers the people to do something and spread that message.”
New technology often fuels populist sentiment. The Populist Party arose in the late 1800s as the country's predominantly agricultural economy started yielding to an industrial one. The breakthrough technology? Railroads. The nation's farmers took aim at newly rich railroad barons and their outrageous fees. But the only way these disaffected citizens really had to communicate that angst beyond word of mouth was print.
As the Great Depression started in 1929, radios were finding their way into US homes. Populist leaders like Louisiana Governor Huey Long embraced the new technology as a means of capturing attention and stoking rage. In 1933, Long delivered his now-famous "Share Our Wealth" speech, which demanded a massive redistribution of wealth, over the radio. That same year, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt started his Fireside Chats, educating the public about the New Deal (a populist agenda in its own right) and using technology to forge a new, and more intimate, relationship with voters.
In the 1950s, television helped Senator Joseph McCarthy spread his particular brand of paranoia and panic. "McCarthy used the medium to terrifying effect," says Nicco Mele, author of The End of Big: How the Digital Revolution Makes David the New Goliath. "The television press was not really respected. It was McCarthyism that led Edward R. Murrow to build a more intense and credible television newscast."
Still, powerful gatekeepers controlled print, radio, and television. Each new technology brought voters closer to their elected officials, but the communication only went one way.
Fast forward to 2004 to another idealistic presidential candidate from Vermont: Governor Howard Dean. By the time he hit the stage, the dot-com bubble had popped and a seismic economic shift catalyzed by the Internet was under way. Dean's campaign fully embraced that shift, soliciting donations online and organizing grassroots events on sites like Meetup.com.
But more than the Internet fueled Dean's campaign, says Trippi, who led the candidate's team. "The biggest thing that enabled us was that by 2003, millions of Americans had bought a book on Amazon," he says. People saw no problem sending credit card info over the web, and embraced the Internet as a conduit for commerce. "All that stuff has to happen," Trippi says, "before you get to the moment where some schmuck can go out there, and say, 'Hey, I'm running for president. I'm against this war. Send me money.'"
This coincided with the rise of the blogosphere, providing a long-shot candidate at the fringe of his party with many more avenues for exposure. For the first time, a new communication technology wrested control from traditional gatekeepers, letting those who had long occupied the party's wings to take center stage.
If blogs undermined traditional media outlets' dominance, social media blew it up. President Obama first took advantage of this in 2008 even as Facebook and Twitter were finding themselves. Eight years later, the world's seen what social media can do at scale. A key consequence of this surge is the diminished role political parties play in choosing their nominee. That's because candidates---the savvy ones at least---build massive online followings independent of the party.
"The process favors the public, who now have access to new disruptive tools," says Mele. "The institution is getting even narrower."
That explains both Trump and Sanders, who use social media as a broadcast medium and a conversation tool, says Matt Lira, a Republican digital strategist and senior adviser to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. "They are using social media like you or I would use social media," he says. "They’re using it as a platform to genuinely engage their supporters."
The rise of social media also helps explain why the electorate is so polarized, says Mele. Even as these platforms expand, the algorithms they use to show users the stories they might like and the people they might like to know grow more narrow. "I'm not sure there is a way to reach the quote unquote public anymore," says Mele. "I don't know how you bring a Trump voter and a Hillary voter into a conversation. There’s no shared space."
It's these niche communities, Mele says, that help would-be Davids like Trump to become Goliaths. And make no mistake, he adds, in the context of politics, Trump started out as a David. "Inside the political power structure Trump has no power," he says. "And so he is very effective in forcing himself into it through a combination of Twitter and earned media."
But Trump may have never gotten this far if the economy hadn't changed so drastically during the last decade. The middle class has shrunk. Wage growth has stagnated. Income inequality is widening. Home ownership is at a record low.
The tech industry hasn't single-handedly upended the economy, but it's played a crucial role in changing the nature of work. There's the fact that investments in clean energy are booming, but the coal industry is dying.
Or the fact that the sharing economy is creating millions of jobs, but few of them offer traditional salaries and benefits.
Or the fact that there are half a million computer science job openings in the US, but not enough skilled people to fill them.
Or the fact that companies like Facebook and Google are developing the artificial intelligence that some predict could eliminate the American middle class.
Or the fact that a startup like Instagram made 13 people rich over night even as one of the nation's most iconic companies floundered.
It's no wonder, then, that so many people find Trump's promise to "make America great again" so appealing. And it's no wonder, either, that those same people would use every tool at their disposal to convince their fellow Americans that such a thing might actually be possible.
