, 10.18.2025 12:13 PM

Influential: this column is Paris Hilton approved

“Know the star you are. And see yourself as part of a galaxy.”

So sayeth the Mother of All Influencers, the Hashtag Highness, the Rich Stick Insect, Paris Hilton. Paris – who I met at a Super Bowl Playboy party in Texas once, full disclosure, and who couldn’t put two words together without a team of ghost-writers – is right, says a new report.

Influencers – at least in Canada, and at least in respect of politics – are the new galactic stars, says a report written by assorted tall foreheads. Influencers rule, dude. They slay.

The detailed, 80-page report, which had many big words in it, was authored by the Canadian Digital Media Research Network, with the assistance of some brainy people at the McGill University and University of Toronto-led Media Ecosystem Observatory. Its main conclusion can be stated thusly:

Influencers had a bigger impact on the 2025 Canadian federal general election than the mainstream media and the politicians and political parties put together.

Like, way more.

The report found that influencers produced almost half, 47 per cent, of the political content that pinged around the Internet during the election. News organizations made up only 28 per cent, and politicians a piddly 18 per cent. Ouch.

Way back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, and when Stockwell Day allegedly interacted with them, the mainstream media dominated the discourse. So, too, politicians and political parties, who spent truckloads of dough on ads. Not anymore.

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