Conservative pundits and right-leaning journalists are experiencing a golden age in Massachusetts with President Donald Trump back in the White House and the billions in taxpayer dollars spent on the state-run shelter system serving as easy fodder for content.
A crop of local figures have risen to the top of the conservative media ecosystem over the past several years and their climb has coincided with a well-established shift away from legacy outlets to platforms whose algorithms promote fiery content to users.
The owner of the X profile “Bostonians Against Mayor Wu” is among the people whose social media accounts have flourished in the past year. The owner said their profile showcases “unfiltered news, video clips, easy to digest content” that appeal to a wide audience.
The account, created months after Boston Mayor Michelle Wu took office, has also focused on issues beyond the Boston Democrat, including the surge of newly arrived migrants in Massachusetts and federal immigration authorities’ attempts to arrest immigrants.
The strategy has worked.
The profile has gained nearly 7,000 followers since December and brought in roughly 7,000 new followers in November alone, according to statistics provided to the Herald by the owner of the account.
That is on top of generating over the past three months more than 46 million impressions — or the total number of times posts have been displayed to users — 2 million “engagements,” and 941,300 likes, according to the X data shared by the owner.
The owner of the account, who requested anonymity, said that they are posting content that “people are looking for,” which has translated into their posts getting picked up by the national media.
“We pump out content as we see it. St. Patrick’s Day, for example, we were seeing videos that we were able to post instantly. Now, I had gotten contacted by the media who were like, ‘Hey, can we talk about this video? Who did you get it from?’ They have to put together their story, etc., where it’s like, we’re just able to shoot it right out right away,” the owner said in an interview.
The person describes themselves as a moderate, a fan of former Gov. Charlie Baker and former Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, and someone who has also praised Democrats like Auditor Diana DiZoglio and Boston City Councilor Ed Flynn.
“Our ultimate goal is to move Massachusetts back to common sense leadership that works for all of Massachusetts, not just rich liberal elites and out-of-town progressives,” the owner of the account said.
They are not alone in experiencing a recent spike in popularity.
Other conservative pundits and journalists have also found themselves with a larger following on social media and other platforms like Substack. It is a position that gives them a bigger platform to shape people’s perception of Massachusetts.
Jessica Machado, the chair of the Somerset Republican Town Committee and a former reporter at the Fall River Reporter, has amassed more than 22,300 followers on X and said she would “rather die than vote Democrat.”
Her recent posts have largely focused on Massachusetts emergency assistance shelters, a taxpayer-funded system that has come to house thousands of homeless families with children and pregnant women, including newly arrived migrants.
Machado said her X account has grown each time she has released something related to migrants or “political corruption.”
“My X account compared to last year is drastic. Many of my posts and works are shared by other big accounts which add to my viewership. Legacy media simply isn’t doing the work to uncover the truth about our government here in Massachusetts,” she said in a statement.
Indeed, a large majority of adults in the United States now turn to their smartphones, computers, or tablets for their news, according to data compiled by the Pew Research Center. A little more than half of Americans at least sometimes get their news from social media, the data showed.
Adults under 30 are also nearly as likely to have a lot or some trust in information found on social media as from national news organizations, according to a separate study from the Pew Research Center.
That has coincided with the decimation of local news outlets across the country, with Boston no exception. Media outlets including WBUR, GBH News, The Boston Globe, and the Herald have gone through rounds of layoffs over the past year.
In other parts of the country, a city or town’s sole newspaper is often a ghost of its former self while some areas are considered “news deserts” because they lack local publication.
Back on social media, local conservative pundits continue to gain popularity.
Jon Fetherston, a former Republican candidate for elected office in Massachusetts, has also found himself with a larger following after he started discussing his time briefly serving as the director of a state-run emergency shelter in Marlboro.
The experience earned him local, regional, and national media attention and boosted the number of followers to his X account “All Politics is Local with Jon Fetherston.”
He said he has gained 4,000 to 5,000 new followers over the past year and data he shared with the Herald shows he regularly generates more than 55,000 impressions each day.
He said people have turned to X to find news “because they’re not finding it in their local newspapers anymore.”
“Who wants to watch a four-hour Select Board meeting? Nobody wants to do it. So people are craving some independent journalists and social media to get their news. And I think that a lot of that’s good, but I also think a lot of that’s a little bit scary because there’s no fact-checking a lot of times,” he said in an interview.