Republican debate: The US voters exhausted by their social media feeds

How is social media affecting what Americans think about their presidential candidates and next year's election? Ahead of the first Republican debate in Wisconsin, a diverse of voters explain what they're seeing online and how it informs their views.

I'm at a bar in the Wisconsin city of Milwaukee, known for its cheese curds and beer, ahead of a key date in the election calendar. On Wednesday, it is set to host the first debate between Republicans hoping to be the party's nominee in 2024.

I'm here because I want to better understand how social media is shaping next year's election, so I'm meeting a group of voters with a range of different political views and experiences. Many of them rely on social media to keep up to date with the election.

For the past year, I've been running an experiment for the Americast podcast to see what different US voters are recommended and exposed to on social media.

But now I want to understand more about how this kind of content could be impacting real voters' opinions on Donald Trump, Joe Biden and the election process.

Memes of former president Donald Trump are inescapable, my of voters all agree.

Sometimes he is dressed like a superhero or there are computer generated pictures of him in orange jail scrubs following his indictments.

These images are funny, says Andrew who doesn't feel represented by mainstream political figures any more and uses social media as his main source of news.

Well it's funny to a degree, he adds. There are times when he realises that politics is actually serious, these people are in charge and he's losing trust in them.

The memes seem to have solidified in his mind the image of Trump as someone who's a winner. But, like several of the other voters on my , the over-saturation of Trump-related content is turning him off the former president.

"Everybody cares about [Donald] Trump and [President] Biden. They don't care about anything else in this country. It's like 'which one of these two is more screwed up">Republicans have won control of both chambers of Congress, yielding Trump limited congressional oversight for at least 2 years.