Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign has joined Twitch and will stream her Democratic National Convention speech to the new channel on Thursday evening.
Both Harris and former President Donald Trump have also joined TikTok, another platform largely dominated by Gen Z users.
Harris' Twitch channel had over 4,000 followers in the afternoon before her big speech. Kamala Harris has officially joined Twitch pic.twitter.com/f4XTvU0bDT
— Dexerto (@Dexerto) August 22, 2024
The channel's about section reads, "Wife, Momala, Auntie. She/her. Fighting for the people. When we fight, we win."
“The VP’s address tonight will be one of the biggest moments of the entire campaign thus far — and we’re making sure we’re bringing her live to voters wherever they may be, Twitch included,” Harris campaign spokesperson Seth Schuster said in a statement.
“Our job as the campaign is to break through a historically personalized media landscape, taking the VP and her vision for the future directly to the hardest to reach voters and those who will decide this election,” Schuster's statement continued. Watch this space! @Twitch is dynamic & lively place to interact w/ followers & voters, but only if Harris campaign faithfully engages w/ the norms of the platform. They won't be successful if they just set up a webcam and rebroadcast what is already on cable news https://t.co/sYRtoXCBbg
— Brandon C Harris, PhD 🍉 (@Harris216) August 22, 2024
The Twitch channel, first reported by Wired, is "part of the Democratic campaign’s broader strategy for engaging young voters online."
"The Harris-Walz campaign has invested heavily in digital, hiring more than 175 staffers across digital organizing, content creation, and digital advertising and fundraising," the report noted. "In the week after Harris jumped to the top of the Democratic ticket, the rebranded KamalaHQ TikTok account quintupled in followers, and its Harris-focused content received 232 million views and 33 million likes."
Wired noted that Harris is not the first campaign to join Twitch; the Joe Biden and Trump campaigns joined in 2020.
An exact time for Harris' speech has not been released, but the headliner has been on stage at 10 p.m. CT every night of the convention.
Pop singer and liberal activist Pink is slated to perform before Harris takes the stage.
