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TikTok as New Media and Its Political Relevance

TikTok is a video-sharing social network app owned by a Chinese tech company,

ByteDance Ltd. Through the app, people can lip-synch to pop songs and recreate movie

scenes. Nevertheless, young Americans use the platform as an outlet for ideological

formation nowadays. People start treating the app as a contemporary platform where they can

express their political opinions, which leads to studies on whether or not TikTok can be

politically relevant. Countless times, the app was used to expose stories behind news, amplify

protests and support socially significant movements. No doubt, TikTok has quietly and

gradually become a political force that relates to the youth of this generation.

Political Relevance

Its ownership structure is currently being discussed. Former President Trump expressed his

concern over its potential security issues since it could be used by China as a surveillance

tool. The White House was not able to provide any proof of the claim, but they proposed it

should be partly owned by Oracle and Walmart.

TikTok has a variety of features that can make a single content go viral overnight, and

brands use it to introduce their products or services to millions of users. It runs on a 60-

second limit and the app makes it easier to reach today’s youth by jumping through a trend of

short yet educational clips. A large section of the public relies on social media as their

principal source of information. News consumption via social media platforms can affect

users’ behavior and contributes to their attitude towards a public figure or an event. This

prompted several studies on the dissemination of low-credibility news and false information
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(Serrano et al. 258). Given the expansive number of social media users who engage online on

a daily basis, researchers considered these platforms as politically relevant; with Titok

witnessing a surge in its marketability. A shared content from both the citizens and political

figures or parties increase people’s knowledge on various political issues (Tucker et al. 17).

TikTok vs Traditional Media

The app represents the combination of several most powerful social media trends - a feed that

exhibits distinct series of content every minute; a powerful televisual medium; an algorithm

that recommends an extensive experience to every user compared to other major online

platforms; and its mobile-only interface that is devised to use a smartphone’s camera to its

advantage (Guinaudeau et al. 4). Social scientists have associated TikTok’s uniqueness with

its structure that “takes advantage of both cognitive systems that separately process verbal

and visual information” (5). Traditionally, the universality of televisual contents has been

regulated by production costs and the requisite for temporally linear media, whereas TikTok

follows a non-sequential format - although limited to text, videos and photos - that the users

can consume quickly. Its televisual element is multiplicative. From a standpoint of a content

producer, the ease of posting encourages more viewers to also become content creators.

What’s more interesting is that political contents are expressed in multiple ways via this app.

For creators whose contents are focused predominantly on politics, the contents can be a

synthesis of news, opinions and political humor. Politicians and corporations have a certain

level of presence on TikTok but the app commits itself in fighting politically related

misinformation.

Conclusion

TikTok may have started as just another craze, but it proved to have filled a void within the

online world for its adaptive nature. The availability of technical effects enables all users to

create and post their own content with minimal effort. It is new and authentic, and for many
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users, it is a refreshing change. It prompts people, particularly the Gen-Z, to take the initiative

to push for social change. The youth were often criticized for the lack of concern about

politics, but they are now leading the fight for positive social order.

Works Cited
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Guinaudeau, Benjamin, Votta, Fabio and Munger, Kevin. Fifteen Seconds of Fame: TikTok

and the Democratization of Mobile Video on Social Media, 2020.

Serrano, Juan Carlos, Papakyriakopoulos, Oretis, and Hegelich, Simon. “Dancing to the

Partisan Beat: A First Analysis of Political Communication on TikTok”. WebSci '20:

12th ACM Conference on Web Science, 2020.

Tucker, Joshua A, Guess, Andrew, Barberá, Pablo, Vaccari, Cristian, Siegel, Alexandra,

Sanovich, Sergey, Stukal Denis and Nyhan, Brendan. Social Media, Political

Polarization, and Political Disinformation: A Review of the Scientific Literature.

2016. William and Flora Hewlett Hewlett Foundation,

https://www.hewlett.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Social-Media-Political-Polarization-

and-Political-Disinformation-Literature-Review.pdf