#131: Trump dominates TikTok
5 billion views per week and counting
Hello.
It was a queer, bratty summer, the summer they shot off Trump’s ear, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. Actually i am not in New York but in London for the International Conference on Social Media & Society and i should somewhat know what i am doing here (presenting first results on TikTok thirst trap propaganda), but this tweet stroke a chord. You are reading Understanding TikTok. My name is Marcus, i am a research fellow at HAW Hamburg. Today we talk about:
🚢 Brump or Triden
🔬Scary Search Suggestions
🍬 Influence vs. Interference
🚢 Brump or Triden in the Brain-Rot Era
Trump dominates TikTok (Politico). And while views, likes and shares on this platform or any other will not instantly turn into votes on November 5, 2024 TikTok is a good indicator for the zeitgeisty developments in real time. I hope all of you are currently collecting the endless array of memes because there is so much to unwrap and study here. At least for “those with brain rot” that “speak in social-media slang and meme references” as Kyle Chayka puts it in the New Yorker.
Oh and TikTok. It now outstrips all other social platforms in watch time, with users spending an average 2.48 hours per day on the app as measured in March 2024 (Variety).
I recommend to follow #FYP a weekly pop-up newsletter in the coming weeks because Josh Klemons, Kyle Tharp, and Lucy Ritzmann are tracking the Presidential race on TikTok. Here is #1 and here is #2. They present and contextualize the latest numbers via social analytics platform Zelf.
According to the newsletter on July 18 there were 45,800 posts mentioning Biden (1 billion views) versus 338,000 posts mentioning Trump (5 billion views) on TikTok in the last week. 45% of the top-performing posts mentioning Biden were negative compared to 61% mentioning Trump being positive.
#FYP points to a bizarre trend of creators “shipping” Joe Biden and Donald Trump and making “romantic” edits of them (the genre is called #Triden) – the top videos mentioning President Biden this week was a “ship” edit from @diorgr6nde.
Something similar can be observed in different variations in other countries. For example see #Weidelknecht in Germany. And of course - yet again - the power of edits as persuasive storytelling technique on TikTok can be examined. Compare edits right after the assassination attempt. Anyone keen on writing a paper on TikTok edits?
🔬Scary Search Suggestions
Search suggestions are an integral part of the TikTok user experience. And they are broken, according to a new report by researchers from the nonprofit organization AI Forensics and Interface, a European think tank (Wired).
The researchers found that 67 percent of 18-to-25-year-old TikTok users in Germany used the search function on the app frequently and that users searching TikTok for parties and candidates were disproportionately served content related to the far-right Alternative for Germany. A systemic risk for public discourse, they conclude.
TikTok provides highly questionable search suggestions beyond false celebrity death rumors or other random search terms. The platform also suggests oddly specific and partially misleading search ideas that can lead users to believe questionable information or send them down contentious political rabbit holes, the team (Miazia Schüler, Martin Degeling, Salvatore Romano and Kathy Meßmer) has observed.
I recommend to play around with the interactive graph embedded in the report. The results may possibly be transferable to other countries as other research shows.
🍬 Influence vs. Interference
Diana Fu (x) and Emile Dirks (x) in a recommended essay (The TikTok debacle) over at Brookings argue that the entire US-TikTok debate points to a more fundamental question about Beijing’s overseas activities: What separates benign foreign influence from malign interference?
Though often used interchangeably, foreign influence and foreign interference are distinct. The former - according to Nye - are transparent, legal and not fundamentally harmful while the latter are used to pierce, penetrate, or perforate the information and political environments while being covert, corrosive, criminal, or coercive.
And while Beijing’s record of foreign interference is well-documented a ban would not address the problem of foreign interference in the form of state-backed propaganda. The authors ask for systemic solutions: To protect social media users, Washington should implement comprehensive privacy legislation that applies to all platforms, whether Chinese or not.
Meanwhile “policymakers should also clarify which activities are malign interference that need to be addressed and which activities are benign influence that may be tolerated. This distinction must in turn be widely communicated to the public to avoid contributing to anti-Chinese racism.”
The distinction might help assess North Korea's latest propaganda song that popped up in April. A “huge TikTok hit” according to the BBC – “peppy, bright-tempoed and dangerously catchy with a certain Soviet-era tinge to it; Gen Z users describe it as ‘Abba-coded’”. Listen up.
What else?
🕳️ Slop What the heck is slop? Is it a useful term? Do we need it? The Guardian wrote about it because 404 media (somehow) wrote about it. And then Ryan Broderick wrote about it as the defining 'genre' of the 2020s and defined it as worthless, generated in bulk, forced upon us and optimized. Rob Horning reacted. And now we are still lacking agreed on terms how to describe the slop polluted noisy void of information in disorder.
🫖 UK Elections The UK has a new government. Congrats. Here is the Guardian on #ukpolitics: how the 2024 general election has played out on TikTok. TikTok has become a catalyst for political engagement, a mirror reflecting the electorate’s discontent and aspirations, writes Stella Martorana for Research Live. And here is an article from the BBC: How candidates are using TikTok to shape election.
⚡Far-right extremism This @VSquare_Project investigation uncovers how far-right groups in Europe are leveraging TikTok to spread conspiracy theories and target young users with extremist narratives.
🍆 Thank god i did not mention Hawk Tuah (Forbes). Well. Now i did. Whatever. TikTok added a popularity sorting feature 🏅 on desktop. This is helpful. Meanwhile Chinese factory owners are becoming TikTok comedians to find new business partners (Rest of the world). Speaking of which🧑🏭 My research fellowship at HAW Hamburg is ending March 2025. If you are looking for a man in finance research fellow investigating TikTok and disinformation, propaganda, and/or political campaigning or alike preferably part-time and remote. Please write me. Thanks!
Thanks for the great insights.