TikTok vs. the Fourth Estate: Comparing Event Coverage in News Media and TikTok

Abstract

TikTok is a major news item, but what happens to news on TikTok? To explore this question, we ask how the coverage of the Russian-Ukrainian war on TikTok differs from traditional news coverage. To answer this question, we used topic modelling on a large dataset of TikTok news, videos, and comments and compared the proportion of TikTok coverage (i.e., videos and comments) about topics related to the war to their proportion in news articles over time. We then analyzed a sample of these videos and comments to understand how these topics were being discussed on the platform. We found that TikTok coverage of events related to the Russian-Ukrainian war was largely focused on users’ personal experience and perspectives, expressed through both videos and comments. We therefore argue that TikTok is anenvironment capable of fostering equitable political communication.