The latest move by the Home Office – paying Albanian social media influencers to ‘de-influence’ migrants from crossing the channel – is undeniably audacious.

Given the small budget relative to the extensive publicity the move has received, some have written it off as just another virtue-signalling (or vice-signalling if you disagree) stunt in the government’s ongoing struggle to address this complex issue. But its origins and implications raise some critical questions.

The whole campaign comes hot on the heels of New Zealand’s right-wing National Party victory in the country’s 2023 elections, where a savvy digital campaign proved essential to their success. Influencers, viral videos and gamified messaging helped the party resonate with younger demographics on their turf, propelling the party to victory. As we contemplate our general election, I wonder how much more we can expect our government to pull from the Antipodean playbook.

However, there is an inherent risk in this approach. Remember Rishi Sunak’s vaping ban announcement on LadBible? The optics of the governments trying to be accessible, pop-culturally relevant and ‘cool’ rarely land well and often veers worryingly close to dystopian fiction. And that’s before we even acknowledge the security concerns of the platform. In June 2023, TikTok was banned from all government phones, hence why the Home Office is getting influencers to post instead, in some bizarre workaround.

Navigating this digital divide, where the language and tools of one generation are foreign to another, is fraught with challenges. And as Borkowski’s recent white paper set out, the generational divide is only set to widen. As we hurtle towards elections this year and beyond, it will be fascinating to see how politicians adapt their communication strategies to bridge this ever-widening gap.