TikTok's options for combining customers' movies lend themselves to political disputes. Fast et al, CC BY-NC-SA
Since its astronomical rise in recognition in the course of the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns, TikTok has performed an growing position in all facets of American life, together with politics, from the White Home briefing key TikTok creators on the conflict in Ukraine to Joe Biden’s presidential marketing campaign launching a TikTok account.
The U.S. Home of Representatives handed laws on March 13, 2024, in search of to pressure TikTok’s China-based dad or mum firm to promote the app or face a ban within the U.S. Even when this laws passes the Senate and Biden indicators it into legislation, it’s unlikely TikTok will go away earlier than the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Any legislation banning TikTok is more likely to be challenged in courtroom, and the app received’t merely disappear from individuals’s telephones in a single day.
On condition that TikTok is sort of sure to play a job within the 2024 election, it’s necessary to look at how TikTok helps form political expression and dialogue. With communications scholar Mackenzie Fast, I lately revealed a journal article exploring how American TikTok customers use the app’s sew, duet and inexperienced display screen options to stoke partisan battle.
Getting collectively
TikTok says its mission is to “encourage creativity and produce pleasure.” In 2019, it launched a number of options to assist bolster that mission: duet, inexperienced display screen and sew. Duet permits you to put up your video facet by facet with a video from one other TikTok consumer. Inexperienced display screen permits you to superimpose your video on a video from one other TikTok consumer. Sew permits you to append your video to the top of a brief clip from a video from one other TikTok consumer.
TikTok presents a number of methods so as to add your video commentary to different individuals’s tiktoks.
TikTok describes these options as giving customers “probably the most inventive instruments obtainable” and offering a manner for customers “to have interaction with the world of content material that’s made … by the ever-creative TikTok neighborhood.” Given these descriptions, it seems that these instruments had been designed to extend creativity, interplay and connections.
They can be utilized in playful methods or utilized by subject material consultants to convey info. For instance, some veterinarians use TikTok to convey pet well being info.
Nonetheless, a platform’s statements about the way it intends its options for use and the way individuals truly use them could be fairly completely different. Whereas these options are sometimes utilized in TikTok’s most popular methods, our analysis discovered that in political tiktoks, individuals typically used the instruments to double down on their political positions and assault those that don’t agree with them. In a time of unstable political divisiveness, these options can operate as shops for individuals to precise their strongly held political opinions.
A TikTok consumer makes a political assertion utilizing the app’s inexperienced display screen characteristic.
Fast et al, CC BY-NC-SA
Scoring factors
Reinforcement and insults had been recurring themes in our research. As an illustration, the inexperienced display screen characteristic was typically used to include “proof” within the background to help the creator’s claims. With this characteristic, “proof” was typically offered within the type of information articles or posts from different social media platforms.
One put up from a conservative-leaning creator includes a screenshot of the Apple iTunes music retailer charts to indicate the recognition of a track known as “Let’s Go Brandon,” a conservative rallying cry and coded insult towards Biden. This creator presents the track’s place at No. 1 within the music retailer as proof that the conservative viewpoint is standard. “Proof” is a free time period and may very well be something that supported the creator’s viewpoint.
We discovered the duet characteristic was typically used to speak nonverbally, typically to poke enjoyable at somebody with opposing political opinions. Eye rolling, smirking and head shaking had been frequent gestures. In a single video, a conservative creator begins a sequence – an prolonged succession of duets – of ladies who help former President Donald Trump. A liberal-leaning creator makes use of the duet characteristic to affix the chain with video of themselves holding a garments iron out to the facet to make it seem as if the iron is burning the unique creator’s hand.
TikTok’s duet characteristic is commonly used to indicate help or opposition to a political assertion.
Fast et al, CC BY-NC-SA
Stitches functioned equally to duets, however individuals tended to make use of the characteristic as an opportunity to verbally reply and refute the earlier creator’s level. These makes use of present that on political TikTok, private emotions and proving others flawed matter greater than constructive debate.
The who and why of political TikTok
Whereas regulation of the app is a political challenge, understanding how political conversations happen throughout TikTok stays necessary for understanding an more and more polarized American voters. When contemplating political discussions on TikTok, nevertheless, it’s necessary to keep in mind that the app’s options don’t pressure customers to do something. Customers actively form their experiences in digital areas.
Additionally, as political communication students Daniel Kreiss and Shannon McGregor observe, it’s necessary to proceed with warning when discussing the results of know-how on polarization as a result of not all teams expertise polarization the identical manner. As an illustration, the Black Lives Matter motion could also be seen as polarizing for disrupting current energy constructions, however its purpose is to battle for equality, and it’s necessary to contemplate that context when wanting on the group’s use of know-how.
The lesson is to contemplate who’s participating in polarizing content material and why they’re doing so. Whereas some customers expressing themselves by way of these TikTok options goal to easily show others flawed, akin to petty arguments, others could also be critiquing and difficult the highly effective.
Jessica Maddox doesn’t work for, seek the advice of, personal shares in or obtain funding from any firm or group that might profit from this text, and has disclosed no related affiliations past their educational appointment.
