How strategic mimicry is reshaping the rules of public discourse
In the summer of 2025, California Governor Gavin Newsom launched what might be the most brazen communication experiment in modern politics. Faced with an antagonistic federal administration, Newsom didn’t just push back—he appropriated President Trump’s entire communication playbook. All-caps tweets, bombastic rhetoric, AI-generated memes featuring himself riding dinosaurs. The “Big, Beautiful Betrayal.” Even Trump’s signature sign-offs.
The strategy was audacious: beat Trump at his own game by playing it better.
This was not political theater for its own sake. Newsom’s team was conducting a sophisticated test of what communication researchers call strategic mimicry—the deliberate adoption of an opponent’s successful communication patterns to compete for the same attention resources. The results offer fascinating insights into how power, attention, and authenticity intersect in our hyper-connected age.
The Mechanics of Attention Capture
To understand why Newsom’s approach matters, we need to grasp a fundamental shift in how communication works today. We’ve moved from an information economy to an attention economy—where the scarcest resource isn’t information, but the cognitive bandwidth to process it.
Vettehen and Schaap (2023) describe a “spiral of increasing attention scarcity,” in which “attention-grabbing content and technology promote extended exposure times and inattentive ways of media use.” In this environment, the ability to capture and hold attention becomes the primary currency of influence.
Trump’s political rise was essentially a masterclass in attention economy exploitation. His communication style—provocative, unpredictable, algorithmically optimized—wasn’t accidental. It was precisely calibrated to dominate media cycles in an information-saturated environment. Every all-caps tweet, every outrageous statement, every meme-worthy moment was designed to trigger what Heitmayer and Schimmelpfennig (2023) identify as the brain’s “primitive hardwired attentional responses.”
Newsom’s experiment tests a provocative hypothesis: can these attention-capture mechanisms be appropriated by political opponents?
The Psychology of Parasocial Disruption
What makes Newsom’s approach particularly sophisticated is its targeting of parasocial relationships—the one-sided emotional connections people form with media figures. Research shows these relationships have become increasingly powerful in political contexts, with Liebers and Schramm (2023) noting that “parasocial phenomena have become increasingly investigated across subdisciplines including political communication.”
Trump’s political success relied heavily on cultivating intense parasocial bonds with supporters. People didn’t just agree with his policies; they felt personally connected to him. His communication style—direct, unfiltered, seemingly authentic—fostered the illusion of intimacy despite the mediated nature of the interaction.
By adopting Trump’s exact communication style, Newsom essentially “photobombs” these parasocial relationships. Trump supporters accustomed to processing information through familiar cues suddenly encounter opposing messages packaged in psychologically comfortable wrapping. It’s a form of cognitive jujitsu—redirecting the energy of existing emotional connections rather than fighting them directly.
Consider the psychological dissonance: seeing Trump’s rhetorical style deployed against Trump’s positions forces a moment of cognitive processing that might not occur with traditionally formatted opposition messages. The familiar triggers attention; the unexpected content demands analysis.
Platform Architecture and Algorithmic Amplification
The technical dimension of Newsom’s experiment reveals another layer of sophistication. Social media platforms aren’t neutral communication channels—they’re attention-optimization engines with specific algorithmic preferences. As Ahmed and Thompson (2025) document, “platforms like X were at the forefront of 2024 campaign strategies, offering cost-effective solutions through viral campaigning using reposts, retweets, and visual content generation.”
These algorithms don’t care about political content; they care about engagement patterns. They reward communication that generates clicks, shares, comments, and time-on-platform. Trump’s style succeeded not because of its political message, but because of its engagement mechanics.
Newsom’s mimicry strategy exploits this algorithmic behavior. By using proven engagement formats, his content gains potential access to the same amplification mechanisms that made Trump’s messages viral. The platforms treat stylistically similar content similarly, regardless of source.
This reveals something profound about modern communication power: format increasingly competes with content in determining message reach and impact. Understanding the technical architecture of attention becomes as important as crafting compelling arguments.
The Authenticity Paradox
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Newsom’s experiment involves the complex relationship between authenticity and effectiveness. Traditional political communication emphasizes consistent messaging and authentic voice development. Candidates are advised to “be themselves” and maintain stylistic consistency across all communications.
Newsom’s approach challenges this conventional wisdom. By deliberately adopting an opponent’s style, he sacrifices traditional authenticity markers for potential communication effectiveness. Yet the strategy’s sophistication suggests a different kind of authenticity—strategic authenticity—focused on achieving genuine policy goals rather than maintaining stylistic consistency.
The temporary pause in the campaign following the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk demonstrates the team’s awareness of contextual appropriateness. This wasn’t reflexive imitation, but calculated strategic communication with clear boundaries and ethical guidelines.
This raises provocative questions for organizational communication: When does strategic flexibility become inauthentic? When does authenticity become strategically counterproductive? How do we balance genuine representation with effective communication in attention-scarce environments?
Lessons for Strategic Communication
Newsom’s experiment offers several insights for communication professionals navigating competitive environments:
- Format intelligence matters. Organizations can no longer focus solely on message development while ignoring communication mechanics.
- Analyze attention architecture. Competitors’ success reveals the underlying engagement dynamics that drive influence.
- Acknowledge parasocial dynamics. Stakeholder emotional connections to competitor figures represent both challenges and opportunities.
- Develop platform-specific strategies. Each platform rewards distinct engagement patterns.
- Adopt an experimental mindset. Organizations must test unconventional approaches while safeguarding their core identity.
The Broader Implication
Newsom’s communication experiment represents something larger than partisan maneuvering. It is a test case for how power and influence operate in attention-scarce environments. The results—whatever they ultimately prove to be—will influence how organizations, activists, and leaders approach public communication.
The experiment also highlights an uncomfortable reality: effectiveness and traditional authenticity don’t always align. In environments where attention determines influence, the most “authentic” approach may not be the most effective. This creates genuine ethical and strategic dilemmas for leaders committed both to principled communication and to achieving meaningful results.
Perhaps most significantly, the case demonstrates how technological architecture increasingly shapes communication strategy. Platform algorithms, attention optimization, and parasocial relationship mechanics are not just academic concepts—they are practical realities that determine which messages get heard and which get ignored.
The Ongoing Experiment
As of this writing, Newsom’s communication experiment continues to evolve. The full results won’t be clear for months or years. But the approach itself—strategic, theoretically informed, willing to challenge conventional wisdom—offers a glimpse into the future of strategic communication.
We are entering an era where understanding the mechanics of attention, the psychology of relationships, and the architecture of digital platforms becomes as important as crafting compelling messages. The organizations that adapt to this reality will thrive. Those that don’t will find themselves shouting into an increasingly crowded and distracted void.
Newsom’s experiment asks a fundamental question: In a world where everyone is competing for attention, do the traditional rules of authentic communication still apply? The answer will reshape how we think about influence, authenticity, and power in the digital age.
Whether his approach succeeds or fails, Newsom has demonstrated something important: in the attention economy, the boldest experiments often reveal the most about how communication actually works. And in a rapidly evolving media landscape, that kind of understanding may be the most valuable asset of all.
References
Ahmed, R., & Thompson, K. (2025). Social media, disinformation, and AI: Transforming the landscape of the 2024 U.S. presidential political campaigns. The SAIS Review of International Affairs, 45(1), 15–32. https://doi.org/10.1353/sais.2025.0002
Corley, K. G., & Gioia, D. A. (2004). Identity ambiguity and change in the wake of a corporate spin-off. Administrative Science Quarterly, 49(2), 173–208. https://doi.org/10.2307/4131471
Heitmayer, M., & Schimmelpfennig, C. (2023). Second wave of attention economics: Attention as a universal symbolic currency on social media and beyond. Interacting with Computers, 37(1), 18–35. https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iwad001
Liebers, N., & Schramm, H. (2023). Research trends on parasocial interactions and relationships with media characters: A review of 281 English- and German-language studies from 2016 to 2020. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, Article 1418564. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1418564
Vettehen, P. H., & Schaap, G. J. (2023). An attention economic perspective on the future of the information age. Futures, 153, Article 103458. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2023.103458