National Social Media Collective report presented by Brooklyn Crawford to the CPUSA National Committee meeting of July 11, 2026.

The National Social Media Collective has been meeting regularly since April, although several comrades have been working together on rebuilding our social media strategy since last fall. One of our first priorities was re-establishing the national CPUSA TikTok account and developing a more intentional approach to our online outreach.

The collective includes active comrades from Ohio, New York, California, North Carolina, Utah, and Michigan — bringing together members with professional experience in video editing, content creation, and script writing as well as members who are new to social media but contribute valuably to our collective nonetheless. This combination of political commitment and technical skills has allowed us to significantly improve both the quality and consistency of our content. We are trying to encourage comrades, who may have thought to themselves before “I could never be in front of a camera”, that they too can learn the skills to help build our Party presence online. We need a variety of faces and voices to represent us. They should reflect the diversity of the multiracial, multi-gender working class.

One important shift in the past year has been in the kind of content we produce. Previously, much of our video output consisted of clips from Good Morning Revolution. While that served an important purpose, we recognized that platforms like TikTok and Instagram reward original, personalized content. We have therefore shifted toward producing videos specifically designed for those audiences while still communicating the Party’s politics and perspectives.

The results have been encouraging. Over the past year, our TikTok account has accumulated more than 250,000 views and is approaching 3,000 followers. On Instagram, we’ve gained more than 3,000 new followers in just the last few months. We currently post the same content across both platforms, but the data shows that Instagram performs more strongly because we began last fall with an established audience of roughly 19,000 followers on Instagram. As we continue building our base on TikTok, we expect our content to be distributed more broadly and our audience to grow organically through consistent posting, which will allow the algorithm to work more in our favor.

Growing an audience, as great as it is, comes with downsides and we must be aware. As our content reaches broader audiences, we already have encountered, and will continue to encounter, fascist and anti-communist trolls who spew bigoted, hateful, and sometimes violent rhetoric in our comments and messages. We are trying to pay close attention to these comments, deleting and blocking where necessary. We encourage comrades to do the same on their club profiles.

Beyond the numbers, the collective has spent much time developing a unified approach to political communication on today’s social media platforms. Our meetings have sometimes become collaborative workshops where comrades analyze platform trends, review analytics, and develop messaging strategies together. We’ve discussed everything from effective hooks and short-form storytelling to educational content, current events, and ways of making Marxist analysis accessible to audiences that may have little previous exposure to our politics.

One conclusion we’ve reached is that effective political communication online requires us to speak in the language of the platforms without abandoning our principles. Rather than simply reusing speeches or long-form political education, we’re producing original content built around current events, working-class issues, labor struggles, anti-imperialism, history, culture, and everyday life. Our goal is to engage with people where they are already having important political discussions. For example, we need to be putting our two cents in on the international politics of the FIFA World Cup or even perhaps the sexual politics of Love Island! People everywhere are engaged with politics in some way and instead of dismissing their interests as distractions, we must participate without compromising our politics. We are aiming to present Marxist ideas in ways that are engaging, accessible, and relevant.

Another area of emphasis has been expanding the Party’s reach beyond official accounts by encouraging comrades to develop their own public presence online. We’ve found that today’s platforms increasingly reward authentic, personality-driven creators over official accounts. As a result, several comrades are intentionally building their own profiles as communist educators and organizers, developing recognizable styles and voices while remaining connected to the Party’s political work.

The collective has been discussing coordinating, through collaborative posting and cross-promotion. Rather than relying exclusively on the national CPUSA accounts, our objective is to cultivate a network of well-known communist creators and influencers who can introduce Marxist ideas to new audiences, reinforce one another’s work, and create multiple points of entry into the Party’s politics. The collaborative posting feature on IG has also allowed us to co-post with local clubs as well as groups and organizations we are in coalition with. This approach has allowed us to reach broader audiences outside of our membership.

Going forward, our priorities are to continue increasing the volume and consistency of original content, develop comrades’ content creation skills, and strengthen coordination with other Party commissions and collectives so that our social media work supports organizing, political education, and Party growth.