## Cable News for Young People: ### TikTok Politics <br> *Benjamin Guinaudeau* *Fabio Votta* *Kevin Munger* <!-- Put the link to this slide here so people can follow --> Slides: https://hackmd.io/@favstats/HJ6DT_fzP#/ --- ### Why should we care? --- ### Why should we care? <br> **2014:** > You study Twitter? Why would anyone care what you had for lunch lmao --- ### Why should we care? <br> **2014:** > You study Twitter? Why would anyone care what you had for lunch lmao --- ### Why should we care?  --- ### Why should we care? **2020:** > I don’t see why the Chinese communist leadership would be all that interested in which American 15 year olds are the best lip-syncers --- ### Why should we care?  --- ### Why should we care? <br> 1. TikTok as a tool for political communication  --- ### Why should we care? <br> 1. TikTok as a tool for political communication 2. TikTok as policy subject + *(Data privacy, National Security, Election Integrity)* --- ### Why should we care? <br> 1. TikTok as a tool for political communication 2. TikTok as policy subject + *(Data privacy, National Security, Election Integrity)* 3. Opportunity to establish cross-platform theoretical framework --- ### But.. what even is `TikTok`? --- ### What's TikTok? <br> + Video-Sharing Social Media Platofrm * 3 to 60 seconds-long videos * 'easy' to edit and stylize * high memebability and potential for virality --- ### What's TikTok? <br> + Two main *feeds* + "For You" + Based on algorithmic recommendation + "Following" + Content from followed users --- ### Scrolling through your feed <!--  --> <iframe width="100%" height="500" src="https://giant.gfycat.com/ImmaterialBigheartedAquaticleech.webm" frameborder="0"></iframe> --- ### Anatomy of a TikTok Post --- ### Anatomy of a TikTok Post  --- ### Anatomy of a TikTok Post  --- ### Anatomy of a TikTok Post  --- ### Anatomy of a TikTok Post  --- ### Duets and Replies for "debates" --- ### Duets and Replies for "debates"  --- ### Rethinking our approach to social media #### in a rapidly changing environment --- ### Rethinking our approach to social media + We learned *some things* about social media platforms already! (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) --- ### Rethinking our approach to social media + We learned *some things* about social media platforms already! (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) + Need **quantitative descriptive analysis** + a necessary pre-condition for causal analysis of *why it is* or *what it does* --- ### Rethinking our approach to social media + We learned *some things* about social media platforms already! (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) + Need **quantitative descriptive analysis** + a necessary pre-condition for causal analysis of *why it is* or *what it does* + *Barefoot empiricism* for each platform is a losing battle --- ### Rethinking our approach to social media + We learned *some things* about social media platforms already! (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) + Need **quantitative descriptive analysis** + a necessary pre-condition for causal analysis of *why it is* or *what it does* + *Barefoot empiricism* for each platform is a losing battle + Need to use theory to transport knowledge from older platforms to new platforms --- ### Social Media Affordances #### embodied in TikTok --- ### Social Media Affordances TikTok represents the synthesis of four of the most powerful trends in social media: + Televisual Medium + The Feed + Algorithmic recommendation + Mobile-first --- ### Empirical Expectations --- ### Empirical Expectations I 1. Lower barrier of becoming a content creator + On TikTok, a greater share of users will be content creators. --- ### Empirical Expectations I 1. Lower barrier of becoming a content creator + On TikTok, a greater share of users will be content creators. --> we don't have the data ready yet to answer this question today --- ### Empirical Expectations II 2. Importance of the algorithm + On TikTok, the number of followers will be less important for gathering views. 3. One-shot fame: virality + On TikTok, the ratio of viewership for a single accounts’ most popular video to their average video viewership will be higher. --- ### Data Collection (Sampling) --- ### Sampling + Initial sample of ~1000 political accounts + Label: left-leaning and right-leaning + Snow-Ball Sampling 1. Get meta-data on potential political accounts (duets, mentions, comments) 2. Keep only the political ones (classifier based on video description; Accuracy: 86%) --- ### Data + TikTok + 1.7k users who predominantly produce political content + have produced ~220k videos since 2018 + Source: Internal TikTok API --- ### Data + TikTok + 1.7k users who predominantly produce political content + have produced ~220k videos since 2018 + Source: Internal TikTok API + YouTube + hand-picked sample of ~1.5k political YouTubers + have produced ~900k videos since 2010 + first attempt at comparison + Source: YouTube API --- ### Descriptives --- ### Supply  --- ### Consumption  --- ### First attempt at testing empirical expectations --- ### Importance of the algorithm ##### Follower-Mean Views Relationship > On TikTok, the number of followers will be less important for gathering views. --- ### Importance of the algorithm ##### Follower-Mean Views Relationship --- ### One-shot fame: virality On TikTok, the ratio of viewership for a single accounts’ most popular video to their average video viewership will be higher. **Account-Level Mean/Peak Views Ratio** --- ### One-shot fame: virality  --- ### Summary 1. TikTok is a popular video-sharing platform, that is increasingly being used to produce political content. --- ### Summary 1. TikTok is a popular video-sharing platform, that is increasingly being used to produce political content 2. The feed structure of TikTok, combined with the substantial role of the algorithm, encourages users to look for virality (which they seem to be able to achieve!). --- ### Summary 1. TikTok is a popular video-sharing platform, that is increasingly being used to produce political content. 2. The feed structure of TikTok, combined with the central role of the algorithm, encourages users to look for virality (which they often seem to be able to achieve!). 3. Emergence of a new social media is an opportunity to *import* knowledge from other platforms, rather than starting from scratch. --- ### Future directions 1. Agenda of political TikTok: what are users talking about? 2. Toxicity of political TikTok: how does memefied content interact with affective polarization? (fair share of cross-partisan interactions, but little deliberation) --- ### Interested in reading more? Check out our data report for more info on what we are working on: http://www.favstats.eu/docs/political_tiktok Slides: https://hackmd.io/@favstats/HJ6DT_fzP#/ <!-- Consequently, the production of televisual content is decentralised and users engage in a large-scale production of video content. --> <!-- In doing so, they try to please the algorithm, which is the key to more views, constrasting with the follower structure of other social media platforms. -->