#130: Postdigital Propaganda
You want to go viral. It’s not that easy.
Hello,
you are reading Understanding TikTok. My name is Marcus, i am a research fellow at HAW Hamburg. Today let me try and tie together some recent observations (#118, #119, #121, #123, #124, #125, #126, #127, #129) under the umbrella term “postdigital propaganda” while observing recent and ongoing political campaigns.
🏭 The platform age
The media of a particular era significantly impact, shape, and structure political communication (Klinger, Kreiss, Mutsvairo 2023). Historically mass media stood as gatekeeper in a sender-receiver model. In the platform age of the 21st century though there are new communication models, rules, actors and techniques in an infinite yet polluted media environment (Phillips and Milner 2021). In order to cut through the noise (#127) actors need to adopt and apply platform-specific strategies suited to reach target audiences in order to influence or persuade.
🎰 Postdigital propaganda
The “digital revolution” has become historical. Since the beginning of the 21st century, we live our social, cultural, political and economic lives in an online-offline nexus, in which both ‘zones’ – the online and the offline – can no longer be separated and must be seen as fused into a bewildering range of new online-offline practices of social interaction (Blommaert 2019). Postdigital therefore is a paradigm that helps to go beyond mere concepts like computational propaganda (Woolley and Howard 2018) in order to better reflect the various volatile varieties that can be observed on algorithmic driven recommender system based video platforms like TikTok. Nonetheless postdigital is “hard to define; messy; unpredictable; digital and analog; technological and non-technological; biological and informational." (Jandrić et al. 2018, 895).
Propaganda models of the past need to be fundamentally revisited, because two of their key elements have been dislodged: mass media in the 20th century sense, and the public sphere in the modernist sense (Blommaert 2019). The term propaganda has been especially loaded throughout the 20th century and associated with a manipulative approach but is understood here as a more neutral and descriptive term of material promoting certain opinions or ideologies.
Taken together postdigital propaganda shall serve as an umbrella term to further investigate phenomena like participatory propaganda, political authenticity, thirst traps (#121) , fan edits, memes and more. This tweet by Jules Terpark and this article by Ilan Manor were amongst several inspirations for this ongoing project.
🧢 A Vibe Called Trump
One day after writing about TikTok’s Trumpification (#129) the man himself joined the platform (Guardian) on June 2. Within a day, Trump had amassed more followers than the Biden campaign's account on the social media platform (NBC). The Biden team has a hard time keeping up with Trump who has been garnering far more than 100 million views for each of his two(!) videos he has posted between June 2 and 18. For comparison: The Biden team in the same time frame has posted 23 videos garnering 4,7 million views all together. Biden has a TikTok Problem (Semafor).
And it is not about these two videos alone. Mr. Trump’s supporters produce an endless stream of memes, videos and adoring posts — all essentially free advertising — that reach an increasingly crucial slice of voters as the New York Times reports (Joe Biden Wants to Go Viral. It’s Not Easy). Or to turn into more academic lingo: Participatory propaganda is the deliberate and systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behaviour of a target audience while seeking to co-opt its members to actively engage in the spread of persuasive communications, to achieve a response that furthers the desired intent of the propagandist (Wanless and Berk 2021).
The account Trump Latinos (“139 days until we vote for the convicted felon”) alone has garnered 4.5 million likes and 325.3K followers. Compare that with 5M likes and 380.3K followers for Biden-Harris HQ.
Does policy matter at all? "I think it's all vibes," said David Kochel, a veteran GOP strategist who worked on former Florida Gov Jeb Bush's 2016 presidential campaign back in December 2023 (ABC news): "I think it's all personality, celebrity, it's all negative partisanship," Kochel added, "and it has very little to do with a policy."
The whole notion of entertainment has been a part of campaigns in the 20st century too, but the conditions in 2024 are different: The vibe is echoed, amplified and spread all over not by the party, the candidate or its campaigning team but mostly outsourced to a vast amount of user who willingly or unwillingly participate in everyday platform vernaculars and affordances. MAGA rap is part of the soundtrack. Listen up 🎶
👔 TikTok Guerilla & Political Authenticity
Europe has voted. After 185 million votes in 27 countries, with a couple of alarming wobbles, the centre held. At least in the European Parliament. In Germany, despite a number of scandals including Nazi whitewashing, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) garnered a higher percentage of the national vote (16%) than any of the three parties that make up the beleaguered coalition of the chancellor, Olaf Scholz. And Emmanuel Macron’s humbling 15%-32% defeat by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) pushed the French president into the huge gamble of calling a snap legislative election (The Guardian).
The German AfD managed to mobilize voters despite their leading candidate’s reach being limited by TikTok for breaching guidelines (The Times). Maximilian Krah’s account had a limited visibility for 90 days after he used it to post homophobic and anti-immigrant videos. Therefore he only posted a handful videos on his account in the last four weeks prior to the election but managed to get a self-proclaimed TikTok Guerilla to reshare his content garnering more visibility on the platform than the official accounts of his opponents. I am still researching numbers here and will post more on how a telegram channel and iphone raffles helped organize yet another participatory propaganda attempt.
Jordan Bardella, the 28-year-old leader of the hard-right National Rally may be weeks away from becoming prime minister of France, and its youngest ever by a long way. After a two-round legislative election on June 30th and July 7th, his party could win enough seats to form a government (Economist). He is garnering support among certain sectors of France's high school, university, and young working demographics (Le Monde). And he is successful on TikTok (#127).
Bardella has perfected the storytelling around his public persona. Although he and the RN are staunchly anti-immigration, he proclaims his family’s Italian roots. He speaks often of growing up in social housing with a single mom who struggled to provide for him in the poor, immigrant suburb of Saint-Denis yet the truth is slightly different (FT). Bardella manages to construct an authentic self in the platform age – political authenticity as a social performance (Luebke 2021). More: How Jordan Bardella has helped give the far right an acceptable face in France (CNN).
📺 Empty Spectacle
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak set July 4 as the date for a national election that will determine who governs the U.K. The first week of Britain’s six-week election campaign has seen frenetic activity (AP) in UK’s “first TikTok election” (Telegraph). Compare #129. Here is the thing:
“If I’m scrolling through TikTok, the two main parties are hardly talking about issues a lot of the time. A lot of it is just insulting one another.” This observation comes from Joe Knight, 18, from Derby, who chatted about politics with a friend over a pint at one of the city's pubs while the BBC was eagerly listening.
Two traditional parties trying to apply memes as modern means of communication without offering added value for users. An empty spectacle while fake accounts might be swaying voters towards Reform UK (BBC, itv).
What else?
🎾 TikTok continues to play a bigger role in news consumption. Go check the Digital News Report 2024 (Reuters)
🎾 While Meta, X step back from publishers, TikTok sees them as an opportunity (Digiday)
🎾 How Americans Navigate Politics on TikTok, X, Facebook and Instagram (PEW)
How young adults use TikTok (TikTok Audit)
🎾 TikTok ads may soon contain AI-generated avatars of your favorite creators (The Verge)
🎾 TikTok’s Bold Move: Using Image Search To Compete With Amazon And Google For Online Shopping Supremacy (Net Influencer)
🎾 Sanctioned Russian Media Entities and Individuals Accessible on TikTok (Alliance4Europe)
🎾 TikTok approved election disinformation ads targeting Ireland - investigation (RTE)
This was a first, fast and superficial take on postdigital propaganda techniques in political campaigning. Thanks for taking the time to read it.
📚 And here are the references
Blommaert, J. (2019). Political discourse in post-digital societies. (Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies; No. 236).
Jandrić, P., Knox, J., Besley, T., Ryberg, T., Suoranta, J., & Hayes, S. (2018). Postdigital science and education. Educational philosophy and theory, 50(10), 893-899.
Klinger, U., Kreiss, D., & Mutsvairo, B. (2023). Platforms, power, and politics: An introduction to political communication in the digital age. John Wiley & Sons.
Luebke, S. M. (2021). Political authenticity: Conceptualization of a popular term. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 26(3), 635-653.
Phillips, W., & Milner, R. M. (2021). You are here: A field guide for navigating polarized speech, conspiracy theories, and our polluted media landscape. MIT Press.
Wanless, A., & Berk, M. (2021). Participatory propaganda: The engagement of audiences in the spread of persuasive communications. Social media and social order, 111-139.
Woolley, S. C., & Howard, P. N. (Eds.). (2018). Computational propaganda: Political parties, politicians, and political manipulation on social media. Oxford University Press.
Goodbye 🍫