Politiktok: How TikTok influences American politics

  @realdonaldtrump vs. @KamalaHQ on TikTok: Comparing analytics and social media strategy over a one-week period Sunday, August 18 - Sunday, August 25 Total number of videos posted: @KamalaHQ: 45 @realdonaldtrump: 1 Total (combined) views on new videos: @KamalaHQ: 53.6 M @realdonaldtrump: 5.4 M In this week's news, the Democratic National Convention ran from August 19 through the 22, receiving mass media coverage due to notable speeches and celebrity guest appearances. Kamala Harris and Tim Walz officially received the Democratic nomination for president and vice president. Because of this publicity, I expected Harris's TikTok to have published more content in the last week when compared to Donald Trump, and I was correct.  Trump's TikTok account only posted one video in the last week. The clip is just 9 seconds long and features the candidate standing in front of a police car, saying America is in decline and, "Nobody is safe, absolutely nobody," promising th...

Hello all! My name is Emma Buker, and I will be using this blog as an exploration of how Americans use TikTok for political purposes, and how the TikTok algorithm in turn impacts how Americans interpret politics. I will be covering different politicians, advocacy groups, and current events, all through the lens of TikTok.  With social media playing such an important role in the spread of political information, especially around election season, I think it will be interesting to focus on one platform and see how political information is disseminated across the user base. There has also been an upward trend this year with politicians using TikTok to try and secure the votes of Gen Z, so I would like to study the effectiveness of that campaign.  In general, I think politics on social media have a bad reputation for being misinformation or shallow, but I view social media as a legitimate tool to get a wide range of people involved in politics at any level.  If you have a...