Becky Bullard spent most of her career in advertising as a brand strategist and copywriter. But after the 2016 election, she stepped into a different role – one of a content creator helping inform people about Texas state and local politics.
“I never wanted to feel again like there was more that I could have done,” Bullard said. She didn’t know how things worked in the political landscape in Texas. She invested a lot of time learning about it, but then she realized that she wasn’t alone.
“After a while I was like, ‘I feel like there’s so many people like me who care a lot about all these various issues and want to be more engaged but feel intimidated,’” she said. “A lot of the content that I put out is toward an end goal of helping people feel more confident to engage civically.”
Using the skills she had built up throughout her advertising career of taking complicated information and turning it into something that feels relatable and approachable, she created Democrasexy, where she applied those skills to the state and local political space in Texas.
After doing a lot of research, including speaking to experts, she’ll explain what a policy does, the process it goes through to get on the ballot, why she landed on being for or against it and how it relates to her life personally. For example, how a tax policy might impact her as someone who is self-employed, but also how a budget shortfall if the tax failed would impact her kid’s school.
People trust her because of the amount of research she puts in, and the way she cites her sources, but also because she always includes ways to move forward to create a sense of hope and optimism, even when the political landscape seems dire.
“What are the actions that we want people to take, and what are the best ways that we can help people feel confident?” Bullard said. “My whole approach to activism is making it as joyful as possible.”
Bullard considers herself an organizer. As she advocates around issues – even the heavy ones – she wants to be building community. That’s why Democrasexy brings its online community together offline.
“Even when we are advocating around issues that are really heavy, how can we build community in a way that feels really good,” she said. “How can we create experiences that leave people feeling optimistic and hopeful and excited to take action?”
One of the first and most popular events that Bullard organized was “Texorcism” in 2022. Halloween falls during the early voting period, so she played off of the spooky season to provide information about the Texas abortion ban, which had just taken effect.
“We’re casting out the demons in the Texas Capitol,” she said. “We all dressed like witches, and I had a tarot reader come do a tarot reading, and there’s drag performance. But then there was also a panel of experts talking about the abortion rights landscape. And so we got a lot of good information. I connected folks with other organizations in the community who are doing work around reproductive justice. And then we had a dance party.”
Bullard said her measure for success for her social media audience is less about big numbers and more about whether or not people are connected in the community she’d built.
“It feels really important to me to develop deep and lasting relationships in this work,” she said. “Is there longevity in the relationships that I’m building online? Do people come to me and ask me questions and feel like there’s a sense of an actual relationship there? The in-person gatherings are a big part of that.”
For Bullard, the News Creator Corps Fellowship increased her confidence in putting out accurate information to her audience. While she always put a lot of research into her ballot guides and videos, the responsibility of people coming to her for trustworthy information weighs heavily on her.
In this Proposition 15 reel before the Texas election in November, she created a reel delving into why she is against the measure, citing sources and referencing court documents in a way I probably wouldn’t have done before the fellowship. At the time, that video performed better than any single piece of content she had ever put out before under Democrasexy, Bullard said.
“I didn’t have any formal training in journalism, so it’s nice to get some actual training and hear from folks who are in the journalism world and learn from them,” she said.
Content creation often falls down towards the bottom of the list of things Bullard has to do. The fellowship reminded her of the value of the content she puts out and has motivated her to invest more of her time and energy into this piece of her life because her audience sees value in it.
“What it has already done for me is show me that this can be more of a focus of my work and that I can professionalize myself as a content creator more than I realized that I could,” she said.