Makena Kelly

In her post-election Forum November 14, Makena Kelly will share her insight on the rise of political influencers on social media and how they affected local, state and federal election results. She’ll cover the definition of an influencer and give us her thoughts on the role influencers will continue to play in U.S. politics.

Makena Kelly is a senior writer at WIRED focused on the intersection of politics, power, and technology. She writes the Politics Lab newsletter that helps you make sense of how the internet is shaping our political reality. Before joining WIRED, Kelly covered politics and tech policy for the Vox Media tech site The Verge. For five years, she published impactful stories related to contemporary antitrust, telecom, and data privacy policy. Since the 2018 midterm elections, Kelly has broken new ground covering the ways in which digital creators and influencer marketing is reshaping politics, covering the Biden and Harris campaigns influencers networks and the GOP creators spreading disinformation online.

She was previously at CQ Roll Call, and the Lincoln Journal Star. Makena graduated from Nebraska Wesleyan University with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 2018.