Elon Musk’s team-up with Donald Trump is different to how media barons operated in the past. Here’s why
Elon Musk’s regular posts of strong support for president-elect Donald Trump on his social media platform X and his expected role within the new US administration present a rolling live case study on the role of social media within public and political debate.
Media owners who want to exert their influence and control the public agenda are nothing new. So what can the history of media magnates tell us about the current cosy relationship between Musk and Trump?
In 1889, French author Jules Verne wrote a short story with his son Michel called In the Year 2889, which introduced the fictional Fritz Napoleon Smith, a newspaper magnate who is so influential he can tell any politician what to do.
This portrayal anticipated the influence and control exerted by real “press barons” throughout the 20th century and into the 21st. Wealthy media owners becoming directly involved in politics throughout history highlights a complex relationship that can exist between populist politics and the interests of the very wealthy.
The early 20th century newspaper owner, William Randolph Hearst, shifted from promoting working-class rights to using sensationalist rhetoric as he became increasingly right-wing during the 1930s. One of Italy’s richest men at the time of his death, Silvio Berlusconi served four terms as prime minister while he was owner of multiple television stations, magazines and newspapers. Both Hearst and Berlusconi were hugely politically influential in their time.
The actions of press owners and potential owners has even provoked changes to the law in some countries. For instance, in May of this year, in Westminster ministers passed legislation to block sovereign wealth funds from controlling UK-based media. It was an attempt to control the influence foreign governments could exert through direct media ownership.
Read more: Rupert Murdoch and the rise and fall of the press barons: how much power do newspapers still have?
In the past other methods have been used to limit media ownership. In 2017, the Murdoch family’s move to buy all of Sky (the satellite TV and broadband company) was blocked through a combination of public campaigns and an investigation by Ofcom. Murdoch later sold his stake in Sky.
Trump and Musk
Media ownership and the endorsement of media outlets – either directly or indirectly – can make or break politicians’ careers.
So how is the Trump and Musk relationship different from the way press barons operated in previous times? The team-up between Trump and Musk extends far beyond the relationship between media owners and political agendas in the recent past. Trump is nominating Musk for a leading role in his planned Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which somewhat ironically is not a government department, but a consulting group, and, with two co-directors, appears to already have an inefficient structure.
Musk’s influence on Trump is immediately evident, not least in the department’s acronym. DOGEcoin is a cryptocurrency that Musk has long favoured. This is in part because of its origins as a parody of other cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin. It has been steadily increasing in value since the election.
Removing pinch points
An independent and free press, as well as freedom of individual expression, is a key part of a healthy democracy. It should be part of the checks and balances that hold media owners in check, as well as holding politicians to account.
Having constrained mechanisms for distribution, such as the need to hold a broadcast licence, or the necessary massive investment in printing presses and national distribution networks, made traditional media – and the press barons who owned them – more readily controllable. This historic ability for government to exert control over the media, such as via broadcasting licenses, is also one possible reason why some media owners have previously entered politics.
There were numerous potential motivations for Berlusconi to run for the prime minister’s position in Italy. But his tenure was marked by accusations of major conflicts of interest on account of his broadcasting empire and ability to influence other media while in office.
Social media channels remove many, if not all, of the pinch points of control and balance. Individual users create the content, with varying levels of moderation (with some platforms adopting a hands-off approach) in many countries. It is immediately available to anyone with access to the channel and with little respect for national boundaries, except where national authorities choose not to allow it.
Significant improvements in artificial intelligence mean that “bots” can amplify political messages aggressively. Unlike media owners of the past, Musk requires no broadcast licence for X or licence to publish his own views on the platform.
The power of Musk
Elon Musk is an influencer and owner. In October 2024, he became his own platform’s most followed individual, with more than 205 million followers. This is a significant public platform for any individual. It’s doubtful whether any press baron of the past had such a powerful soapboax with which to communicate directly with the public. When bots are combined with algorithms that are set to promote, individual messages are more likely to find favour with specific audiences. This creates a powerful echo chamber for one man’s opinions.
One of Musk’s own messages, following his interview with Donald Trump in August 2024, quantified this power. He posted: “Combined views of the conversation with @realDonaldTrump and subsequent discussion by other accounts now about 1 billion.”
During the summer rioting in the UK, Musk’s messages presented a very definite political opinion, based heavily on conspiracy theories he was reading on X. A now deleted tweet on August 4 caused the most concern: “Civil war is inevitable”, it read.
There are already signals that Musk may be too much of a handful for the political elites in Mar-a-Lago and Washington. But the reality could be more mundane. When, and if, the Department of Government Efficiency, and the wider Trump administration, struggles to remove the checks and balances that are in place to protect ordinary people from unregulated activity by companies such as SpaceX, Starlink, Neuralink, Tesla or X, Musk may well lose his current interest in government and move on to something else.
So while the press barons of the past were able to exert considerable influence on politicians, in theory at least, there were also levers to limit their power. Many of these levers do not apply in Musk’s case, but frustration may yet restrict Musk’s foray into US politics.
Gordon Fletcher receives funding from InnovateUK.