Securing the Youth Vote: A Comparative Analysis of Digital Persuasion on TikTok Among Political Actors

Abstract

In the context of “pop politics” and “politainment,” the irruption of TikTok has changed the landscape of social media and become the fastest-growing application among young people. Based on the peculiarities of the social platform’s affordances and the political personalization approach, we explore the differences between political parties and political leaders in terms of digital persuasion on TikTok in Spain and Poland. This work contributes to the scarce knowledge about the strategic use of TikTok for political purposes. It also attempts to fill the gap in the comparative research into the practical uses of TikTok in different political contexts. The study explores the three classical persuasion appeals—pathos, ethos, and logos—based on a visual, quantitative analysis of <em>N</em> = 372 videos posted on the official TikTok profiles of the main political parties and leaders from January 1st to March 31st, 2022. Differences were found in how political parties and political leaders used TikTok’s affordances as well as in the main rhetorical resource they use to persuade. We noted the use of more rational resources (logos) in the case of political parties and more emotional resources<em> </em>(pathos) for political leaders. Further, the rare presence of the personality in the videos of the political actors (ethos), along with their unusual privatization role, indicate that personalization on TikTok is far from being considered as part of their digital persuasion strategy.

TikTok Use in Municipal Elections: From Candidate-Majors to Influencer-Politicians

“…In Spain the first work analyzing the use of TikTok by political parties , although studying the political use of TikTok in its embryonic stage and not in a campaign period, agrees that political actors do not take full advantage of this social network; these results have been later confirmed by Morejón-Llamas, (2023), Zamora-Medina et al (2023), and Gómez de Travesedo-Rojas et al (2023).…”

“…In addition, posts related to the campaign, such as those showing campaign events, campaign videos, etc. have been codified as «campaign issues» (Zamora-Medina et al, 2023) Further on, conceding that any Municipal election inherently entails certain degrees of personalization, under «personal content» I have categorized only what Metz and colleagues (2020), define as «private personalization», that is to say, content dealing with the candidate's private persona, showing aspects of her private life (family, hobbies, etc.) and personal characteristics.…”

TikTok en campañas políticas: estudio de caso de las elecciones regionales en Colombia, 2023

“…A través de este se establecen las preferencias de los usuarios de acuerdo con el registro del cúmulo de interacciones con la aplicación, independientemente de los alcances que estas tengan en términos de seguridad, ciberseguridad y salud mental . La forma en que funciona el algoritmo de TikTok apalanca procesos de información y comunicación virales capaces de moldear emocionalmente a su espectador (Zamora-Medina et al, 2023).…”