The landscape of media influence in Morocco has undergone a significant transformation. The pressing question is no longer about who possesses a media platform to shape public opinion; instead, it has shifted to who owns the audience and can communicate directly through the smartphone screen. This shift is particularly evident with the rise of YouTube and other social media platforms, now seen as spaces for news production, interpretation, commentary, and mobilization, rather than merely content consumption. By the end of 2025, Morocco had approximately 35.5 million internet users, representing 92.2% of the population, while social media user identities reached 22.8 million. Notably, Google advertising data indicates that the potential reach of YouTube ads was around 21.6 million users, or 60.8% of the country’s internet user base.
Importantly, this is not merely a marginal entertainment phenomenon. An academic study focused on the Moroccan elections of 2016 concluded that digital media and video bloggers played a more central role in political discourse on YouTube than traditional political elites and official media, which were conspicuously absent from the list of the most influential figures. Thus, what we witness today is not the birth of a phenomenon but rather its evolution from the margins to a competitive force in shaping the public sphere.
From Journalist to Content Creator: Blurring Boundaries
In the Moroccan political arena, the case of journalist Tawfiq Bouachrine exemplifies this transformation. Bouachrine is not a newcomer from the traditional influencer sphere; he is an established journalist and writer, and the founder of a well-known print and digital media outlet. However, his transition to YouTube has created a new model: a journalist who no longer requires a media institution to reach his audience. His YouTube channel, launched in 2022, has evolved into a standalone political platform. Indicators from July and August 2026 reveal significant viewership numbers, with some videos surpassing hundreds of thousands of views, while the channel itself is nearing hundreds of thousands of subscribers and tens of millions of views.
This creates a paradox: a journalist who once relied on a printing press, capital, an editorial institution, and distribution can now build a "personal media institution" with just a camera, video editor, global platform, and a loyal audience. The significance of this shift becomes even clearer when we consider the topics Bouachrine addresses, including elections, the political system, the economy, the monarchy, Moroccan-Algerian relations, international politics, and government affairs. His platform has transcended being merely a personal channel; it has become a genuine competitor to some of the functions previously performed by political journalism.
Mahdaoui: From "Journalist" to "People’s Platform"
The case of Hamid Mahdaoui illustrates a more explicit transformation of an individual into a media institution. Mahdaoui presents himself not just as a journalist producing media content but has also become a media brand in his own right. His channel combines news, political commentary, dialogue, and live debate, allowing him to host political, human rights, and media figures outside the traditional constraints of television programming schedules. The statistics from his channel reveal the scale of this transformation: it has surpassed one million subscribers, with some episodes achieving hundreds of thousands of views. Furthermore, his influence extends beyond his own channel; his interviews and materials circulate widely on social networks, entering the broader political discourse.
Crucially, Mahdaoui embodies the shift of journalism from institutional to personal. Followers are less likely to seek out a "website" or "newspaper"; instead, they are drawn to "Mahdaoui." This is one of the key characteristics of the influencer economy: trust, loyalty, or animosity is now more closely tied to the individual than to the media brand itself.
The cases of Nourddine Lachehb and Younes Maskin represent another facet of this phenomenon. Lachehb has built a long journalistic and intellectual career, appearing in Moroccan and Arab newspapers and websites throughout political and intellectual discussions. Similarly, Maskin, a journalist from a generation raised in a professional media environment, has become part of the ongoing dialogue regarding the new relationship between journalists and YouTube. In an article from late 2025, he articulated a fundamental paradox: the media institutions that criticize YouTube or position it against journalism partially or wholly rely on revenue from digital platforms themselves. This raises a critical point: Bouachrine, Mahdaoui, Lachehb, and Maskin should not be categorized as "influencers" in the commercial sense without nuance. More accurately, they represent a migration of part of the media and cultural elite to platforms where the individual becomes a distribution channel, an editorial institution, and a community of followers. This migration is one of the most crucial keys to understanding the "YouTube revolution" in Morocco.
However, the true revolution has come from outside traditional journalism. If we focus solely on journalists, we will fail to grasp the full scope of the phenomenon. The other side of the digital revolution is that individuals who have not come from journalism have been able to build audiences that sometimes surpass those of journalists and media institutions. A striking example in the religious and social realm is Yassine Amari, whose official channel has transformed into a massive audience platform, with tracking data showing over 1.1 million subscribers and around 70 million views as of August 2026. In the technology and entrepreneurship sector, one can cite Amin Raghif, who has built his presence around technology, online work, digital security, and e-commerce, with one of his current channels boasting over 156,000 subscribers and approximately 15.5 million views, alongside other digital projects associated with his name.
There is also the late Soufiane Bahri, who presents a completely different model: building digital influence around images and news related to the king and the royal family, with a significant presence across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. His YouTube channel has about a million followers, while some clips have garnered millions of views. In the early history of Moroccan YouTube, "Moul Al-Kaskita" served as a more confrontational model: a person outside the traditional media framework becoming an active participant in political discourse, to the extent that his arrest in 2019 following a video criticizing the king and the regime became a case transcending the channel owner to raise questions about the boundaries of digital expression. These examples reveal that the phenomenon does not move in a single direction. There are journalists turning into YouTubers, YouTubers becoming journalists, and individuals who are neither journalists nor politicians nor academics yet wield political or social influence because they have captured an audience.
This is the most critical point: in the old model, symbolic authority was almost evenly distributed among newspapers and journalists, political parties and politicians, universities and professors, religious institutions and religious figures, and television and broadcasters. In the new model, a single platform can grant an individual symbolic authority that transcends these institutions. Therefore, the rise of influencers in Morocco should not be reduced to "TikTok triviality" or a mere advertising phenomenon pursued by companies to sell products.
Economically, the sector has already become substantial; a study by "DJ Trend Zad" highlighted an increase in the number of influencers in Morocco from about 1,400 in 2018 to 60,000 in 2022, with reports estimating the influencer marketing market in Morocco at around 4.2 billion dirhams by 2024. However, economics is merely the first face of this phenomenon. The second aspect is the redistribution of power in discourse, and the third is redefining who has the right to be a leader of public opinion.
The deeper transformation is that the audience is no longer merely seeking "information" but rather the individual who interprets that information. This explains why political videos presented by a single person achieve hundreds of thousands of views. The audience consumes not just the news but also: the position + the personality + the language + the emotion + the narrative. In this regard, YouTube outperforms traditional journalistic articles in some areas. A journalist might write: "The government is facing a political crisis," while an influencer tells the viewer: "Let me explain why this crisis will occur, who benefits from it, and who loses." This shift from merely reporting news to creating personal interpretations of the news is at the core of the political influencer phenomenon.
So, can this phenomenon thrive outside of traditional communication and media circles? Yes, and with vigor; however, not uniformly across all domains. In the entertainment, social, and commercial fields, the phenomenon has long since stepped outside traditional media circles. In the political arena, there remains a strong reliance on individuals who already possess professional, cultural, or media capital. This indicates that we are witnessing two parallel paths: the first path involves journalists migrating to platforms; figures like Bouachrine, Mahdaoui, Maskin, and Lachehb belong to this category to varying degrees. The second path sees the rise of influencers coming from outside journalism; they emerge from technology, religion, entertainment, sports, fashion, cooking, entrepreneurship, and daily life, with some gradually moving into expressing opinions on public issues.
Academic research on Moroccan content indicates that the discourse produced by content creators oscillates between informing and self-promotion, which is crucial for understanding that an influencer is not necessarily a journalist but rather an individual with a personal identity and a public project simultaneously.
Ultimately, the youth demographic is the key link in this model’s success. The platform does not wait for citizens to come to it; instead, it goes to them. Morocco is a highly digital society: more than nine-tenths of the population is online, and approximately 22.8 million user identities exist on social networks, while YouTube reaches tens of millions of potential users. Furthermore, academic research in Morocco has previously indicated how marginalized youth have utilized YouTube to produce counter-narratives to dominant discourses, exemplified in the "Bouza Tales" model.
As reported by arabi21.com.
