Posting Styles of and Engagement with US Politicians’ Content on TikTok

The next session of the ICA 2024 conference that I’m in starts with Christian Pipal, whose interest is in political communication and viewer engagement on TikTok. He begins by noting the use of TikTok by the Austrian presidential candidate (and subsequently president) in Austria, Alexander van der Bellen, who both announced his candidacy there and posted the requisite dancing videos.

TikTok may be especially attractive to political candidates because of its younger audience profile, but is this dancing or talking politics? Candidates have explored some very different communicative styles that seem to work for them on this platform: comedic, documentary, communal, explanatory, interactive, and meta – and the present study explores the use of these styles by US candidates on TikTok, and the issues they address with them.

This draws on all 2,230 videos produced by US politicians by May 2023 – this covers 37 politicians, and (following their calls to ban TikTok in the US) no Republicans. They were coded manually for the political issues they addressed, and the communication styles they employed. More than 80% of these videos did address a political issue; government operations were especially central. Explanatory styles were overwhelmingly prominent, and often linked to government operations issues. Comedic videos were relatively limited in number.

Civil rights topics attracted marginally more engagement than others, but overall this was relatively even across topics; meta videos were few, but attracted far more engagement; comedic videos received significantly more engagement. Videos by women politicians received notably more engagement.

Some political issues might be inherently more suited to TikTok than others, then, and finding the right style to present them remains a challenge that has not yet been solved.