#127: The Noise

Communication strategies to cut through

Hello, 

you are reading Understanding TikTok. My name is Marcus, i work as researcher and communication advisor for media organisations and political parties. Today we talk about:

🫨 The Age of Noise
🧮 MEPs by the numbers
🛠️ The Creator Economy

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🫨 The Age of Noise

We enter the age of noise, writes Eryk Salvaggio: “Noise is the mental cacophony of data, on social media, of smartphones, and the algorithmic spectacle. The age of noise is a logical conclusion, a successful ending for the information age. And information, which was once scarce, is now spilling from the seams of our fibre optic cables and airwaves.”

The notion of noise perfectly describes the current infinite media environment we are in. And it helps us to better understand the current attempts – shrill, sad, strange, simple –  to cut through this noise. I unwrap three different strategies currently applied by political actors:

🪼The Absurd – formerly known as (Meta-)Cringe

My neck, my back

Let’s start with the notion of cringe. Cringe can be defined as a combination of regret, awkwardness and embarrassment. Cringe is a reaction to failure – specifically, the failure to uphold standards for what is ‘good’ or ‘cool’. Think of dancing politicians trying to be down with the kids in a pre-irony era. Meanwhile several layers of cringe have emerged with some politicians embracing post-ironic cringe. This is when someone recognises something is cringey and embraces it.

German politician and Minister-President of Bavaria Markus Söder (67.6K Followers 718.8K Likes) qualifies as a good example, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni can do post-ironic cringe too. According to some including Vice (RIP) meta cringe was peaking in 2023 (Z feed). Now it is 2024 and i would like to introduce “the absurd”. The meta of meta cringeness. Things that are just beyond.

I encourage you to watch this video of German politician Thomas Diener, member of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany and a member of the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania state parliament since 2021. Diener cosplays a wolf in a furry costume, not eating but “licking little red riding hood” after sharing a glass of red riding hood sparkling wine. Well, yes. There is an actual political backstory concerning hunting and a wolf but who cares. The video was posted on his official Instagram and TikTok account and sparked a little debate. Justly! 

We see a planned attempt to cut through the noise of silence on his accounts. And while this proves to be somewhat successful for a very short moment in time the effect does not radiate. You can hardly build up on this performance perceived by some commentators as a cheesy home amateur film intro. The furry costume prove as a dead end. Have you seen similar or other attempts by politicians to push the notion of post-ironic cringe to far? Happy to gather evidence.

🪼 Participatory Propaganda – featuring the Smurfs

A fictional colony of small, blue, humanoid creatures who live in mushroom-shaped houses in the forest

More videos, more views, more likes, more comments, more engagement equal more reach. This is a law on an algorithmic driven platform. Welcome digital propaganda.
Core features of digital propaganda include scalability, automation and anonymity according to Woolley & Howard (2018). No one knows better than German right-wing extremist party AfD (#123) where large parts of the semi-automated propaganda work is outsourced to an army of fans. The latest TikTok trend promoting the party hijacks no other than the smurfs after the AfD has already successfully hijacked the blue heart emoji and turned it into an unofficial logo on the platform and in the comments.

The backstory to the smurf thing: “German police took a 16-year-old schoolgirl out of her class after she was denounced by her headteacher for expressing political sympathies with right-wing party AfD in a harmless Smurf video.” (The European Conservative). Well, in fact it was not about smurfs but about codes and dog whistles used by extremists (FAZ). The AfD has a new martyr. A 16 year old blond German girl with a far right worldview. And they have smurfs. They are harmless, maybe cute, they are  blue, just like the AfD, and they sing. And this is perfectly suited for a sound driven platform like TikTok. That is why there are a few sounds circulating right now that are used as the foundation of AfD smurf edits. Listen up here, here or here.

This is a manifestation of the remix culture (Primig et al., 2022, p. 2), in which “publication does not mark the end of content but the beginning of an ever-new reinterpretation of content fostered by a participatory paradigm.” A clever move to pick something as harmless yet emotional as a kids nostalgia and turn it into a symbol for political activism and resistance against the “corrupt elites who punish innocent blond teenagers and their love for the smurfs”. The notion of participation and group action helps to tie bonds and cut through the noise while turning it into an endless techno smurf earworm. 

🪼 Passionate Persistence – sounds like a whisper

Hello, my dears. It's Friday afternoon

Just a tiny observation. Katarina Barley, Vice-President of the European parliament and German EP top candidate for the Social Democrats has stopped proclaiming on TikTok. She has turned down her voice. She has a little microphone now, just like the creators on TikTok and sometimes she is nearly whispering. Which of course is a good thing. Because you do not proclaim on TikTok. You are not in a parliament and your are not in a press conference either. You are in the palm of a hand. You are in a face time call. You need to come closer, look at me and talk – to me.

Sometimes you cut through the noise by not shouting. Sometimes you cut through the noise by being persistent. Sometimes you cut through the noise by keeping on keeping on with a message that is important – hopefully not only for yourself but for others to listen to. This is a strategy for passionate creators that mean it. Endurance pays off.

Barley’s account is not yet there. There are barely any hooks that drag us in. And not every video has a clearly defined emotional or content-wise goal. And despite the face time call voice i struggle with the political authenticity and a connection  here and there because i have a feel that some sort of inner parking brake is still applied in many videos. But i see a politician willing to try, adopt and experiment. And this is still the core practice on the platform. I suggest to learn more about how Heidi Reichinnek (145.6K Followers 4.4M Likes) and team build videos (in this video, it is in German) that obviously work on the platform. Different characters of course but nonetheless some crucial points to follow.

👉 The challenge of this age of noise is to find and preserve meaning and elevate context, concludes Salvaggio: Fill in the gaps and give the ghosts some peace. No real need for a TikTok panic that the German weekly Der Spiegel postulated. But there is definitely more needed than the lame attempt of the German health minister Karl Lauterbach to start “a revolution on TikTok”. This is not a revolution. It is noise.

🧮 MEPs by the numbers

The Chinese platform is becoming an important factor in elections worldwide (Die Zeit). After my first dive into European politics on TikTok (compare #125) Politico has now delved deep into the numbers and reviewed activity on accounts of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) between February 15 and March 8.  With the European Parliament election in June Politico found 186 accounts for MEPs (out of 705) and aggregated the number of followers and videos as well as total number of likes on their videos. Here are some key findings:

IS stands for Identity and Democracy a right-wing to far-right political group of the European Parliament

• Far-right and far-left politicians have mastered TikTok politicking best. Politicians in fringe groups were quicker to get on the platform in droves, gained more followers and gathered more likes on TikTok than their counterparts from mainstream parties. 

• TikTok stars like french far-right wonderkid and digital native Jordan Bardella (1.1M Followers 22M Likes) or french left politician Leila Chaibi (189.3K Followers 6.6M Likes) boost groups’ numbers.

• About one-third of France’s, Italy’s and Germany’s MEPs are present on TikTok; countries where the app has a significant number of users. In its latest report, TikTok said it had around 20 million users on average each month in these countries. Check all the numbers and charts here.
  
  And if you want to learn more about German MEPs check out this thread by Martin Fuchs.

🛠️ Keeping Up with the Creator Economy

You are huepsch

I liked what Tori West, founder of BRICKS magazine, wrote on Burn After Reading sharing insights into the shifting worlds of publishing and content creation. I quote the entire paragraph. But of course you should head over to read the entire piece: 

Fast forward to 2024, and personality is king. Fashion TikTokers such as Fashion Boy (232k), I Deserve Couture (111k), and Bernard Garby (426k) are single-handedly overthrowing media outlets based on engagement and following alone. They don’t even have websites. TikTok's most significant news account isn't VICE, The BBC or Sky News; it's one guy, TikToker Dylan Page, who boasts 10.6m followers. Some fashion IG accounts are fully branded as media outlets, such as Up Next Designer (495k), but the platform is solely run by one content creator. I suppose from an advertiser perspective, it's more cost-effective for an advertiser to pay one creator, who are now being considered as media companies in their own right, rather than an outlet with considerable fees to keep their office and staff afloat. 🤷

What else

Hier fällt sich das Geschehen dauernd ins Wort

The large medium and its world-fragmenting control have long since managed to make us consider the escape of ideas and slight madness to be our completely normal perception. Is that information? Isn't it rather a single, huge Pacman game, an incessant lighting up and shooting down of people, opinions and mentalities? The madness time will soon become normal time.

German author Botho Strauß is not talking about TikTok here. He is discussing 20st century television in his 1984 novel: Der junge Mann (The young man). Thanks for reading. Speak soon.