Erika Harrison began blogging a decade ago as she explored Houston, going out to eat with her friends. She found people would often ask her, “Where should we go for my birthday? You typically know all the fun places in town. Where should we go?”
But if you look at her channels today, you’ll see a different theme. While she continues her food content on some platforms, she also now posts about politics: educating her audiences on the nuances and contexts of political happenings, breaking down processes some people don’t understand, and focusing on how politics impact the Black community.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when she made the jump to politics, but one of her first memories of such content came around President Donald Trump’s impeachment hearings in 2019.
One of her coworkers brought peach tea with some fresh mint to watch the hearings. (Get it? Im-peach-mint.) She posted about it on social media.
“I remember posting this and this woman messaged me and was like, ‘This is disgusting. We don’t follow you for this,’” Harrison said. “I’ve never gotten a message like that since, which is so funny, but she was just so mad that I was talking about political things.”
She realized many didn’t understand the process of things like impeachment or how they could get involved locally.
“They didn’t always know what the midterms were,” Harrison said, as an example. “And so that’s part of why I started talking about it more. And the more I talked about it, the more questions people gave me. I’m like, ‘Okay, I gotta do more.’”
Not only is it important to make politics digestible, but Harrison makes it as entertaining as reality television.
“They’ve been on my nerves lately, but typically I like Bravo TV shows,” she said. “I feel like my superpower is being able to take politics and make it sound like the [Real] Housewives.”
“It just is amazing to me how much inaccurate information is down here,” she said. “People are making decisions that impact all of us because of inaccurate information. Maybe it’s selfish of me, but I want us to all be on the same page. I want us to all have the same book, to walk into the voting booth with the same information.”
Last week’s election in Texas is a good example of this, she said.
“We had 17 propositions on our ballot for this offcycle race,” Harrison said. “Seventeen was already ridiculous. They were meant to be tricky, and a lot of us did the research and walked in informed. A lot of us didn’t, and they all passed, and I find it to be frustrating.”
Many people stayed home because they thought the election was rigged by gerrymandering and their vote wouldn’t matter, Harrison said, but she tried to explain to her followers that wasn’t the case in the statewide election.
It’s one thing to be misinformed in a silo, but often people take misinformation and actively spread it.
“We’re losing the group project because people are taking misinformation and running with it,” Harrison said. “As Beyonce says, ‘No one wants albums anymore. They want a single.’ It’s like that. People don’t want the full information. We have more information at our fingertips through this phone than any generation before us. And we are arguably probably some of the least informed voters of any generation before us.”
“We’re losing the group project because people are taking misinformation and running with it.”
Erika Harrison
It also became clear that there was a group of people who were political nerds like her, but didn’t have friends or family that they could talk to about politics.
“I think some people are learning something, others are being affirmed,” Harrison said. “I’m a political nerd, and I create this safe space for other political nerds as well who may not always have friends who are interested in it.”
Harrison has subscribers on Instagram, and will create group chats for the events like the Democratic National Convention or the State of the Union addresses, so people can chat about them just because they care about what’s going on.
She applied for the News Creator Corps program in hopes of learning more about journalistic tools she can master for her content. Harrison went to the University of Missouri – and although she studied history – she had many friends in the college’s renowned journalism program that left her with a lifelong belief in its importance.
While she always tried to post her sources and use public records, she said being in the program is a good reminder to always share where she gets information from.
For example, in the recent election, she posted voter turnout during early voting for her followers because the numbers were so low.
While Harrison didn’t start posting about politics to get calls from and interviews with politicians, she’s suddenly found herself in those positions. It’s a responsibility she takes seriously.
“You look up, and you get pushed into these spaces where your impact is real,” she said.