The Ambivalent Ordinariness of Queensland Election Candidates on TikTok

The post-lunch session at IAMCR 2024 starts with the great Susan Grantham, whose focus is on the use of TikTok by Queensland state politicians in the lead-up to the October 2024 election. Even in spite of moves to ban TikTok in government departments and at the federal level for security reasons, candidates have been active on TikTok, and have been using it to build an ‘authentic’ personal brand – which requires immediacy, consistency, and ordinariness.

This study examined the posts made by the leading Queensland political candidates fir their performance features, topics, and use of humour; it found that all candidates used TikTok especially for immediate commentary, but also attempted to present themselves as ordinary people – outgoing Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk connected with a mumfluencer, for instance; opposition leader David Crisafulli played up cringe-worthy, self-deprecating dad humour and posted cooking videos that drew on his Italian heritage; and new Premier Steven Miles posted an odd style of ‘polisnacks’ cooking-slash-politics videos that show him do domestic cooking tasks while talking about his government’s policies. This can be described as a kind of ambivalent ordinariness.