With all the General Election excitement at the moment, campaigning parties are turning to different social channels to captivate new audiences and spread their message far and wide – encouraging a new wave of voters. The channel in question? TikTok.
Views on politics have changed enormously over the years, with Millennials and Gen Z being more politically engaged than ever before, taking an active and progressive approach to social issues.
Gen Z Cerys Davies of Orlo shared her views, hopes and fears…
Do you use TikTok much normally, and how do you use it?
Yes, I am a TikTok user – I actually use it every day. It’s mostly for entertainment purposes, sharing videos with friends and family that they might find interesting or funny, or keeping on top of current and possibly upcoming trends. I also use it as a search engine so I can see physical examples of products that I’m looking to buy, concepts, anything really! I’m quite a visual person so it’s good being able to see things properly to understand them, and in short, digestible video form.
Have you always been a TikTok user?
Yes, even before it was TikTok! I’ve been using the app since it was musical.ly, which was mostly for short lip-syncing videos, before it merged with TikTok. I mean, that’s how TikTok got big really, with the lip-syncing videos, which then turned into dances, and then it turned into the mainstream social media platform that we know today.
Has there been much political campaigning on TikTok, and have you seen much of it?
Surprisingly there has! What I will say is that I don’t usually engage with content that’s political on TikTok but certain videos and video styles have been making their way onto my feed so I’ve been seeing more than I thought I would originally. It’s not the type of content that I would have expected to see from political parties, if I’m perfectly honest.
Can you elaborate?
Well, a lot of it is in line with the different TikTok trends at the moment, but… you just wouldn’t expect that type of content from the main political parties! It’s definitely engaging content but the videos seem, to me at least, a bit like they’re just there to grab your attention – especially the younger audience.
Aside from more informative content and being signposted to helpful resources, what would you like to see more of from the political parties on social media?
I think, aside from the content being more informative, I wish the parties spoke more about themselves rather than dissecting the opponents’ policies – like I said, I don’t know much about the parties at the moment so that would definitely help with that. Also, based on the content, I don’t feel like I can trust the parties at the moment. I wish there was more openness and transparency, especially because at the moment I find the comment sections on TikTok more trustworthy than the actual content… It just feels like an attempt to be funny and appeal to Gen Z more than anything else. I’d much rather make my own decisions on who to vote for, and with anything else, than be persuaded by something on social media, so I do look to other platforms and compare the content that’s posted on there to make informed decisions.
Is that not the point of social media posts?
I guess so, and on TikTok especially. But I wish the content that the parties were posting was much more informative. At the moment it feels like the videos are designed to get people having conversations in the comment sections – which is great, I really like that people are using their voices and getting into discussions – but it does worry me a little bit. I’d say the comment sections can be quite biased but there is still a variety of opinions in there, rather than being exposed to only one way of thinking at least! And with politics, people want to voice their opinions as much as they can which is great, we should all be involved in the conversation.
How does it worry you?
There’s a lot of younger users on TikTok, people that aren’t even old enough to vote yet. So in the comment sections it feels like the conversations are there to sway the young voters to vote a particular way, even though they’re not properly informed. People my age probably won’t do their own research and likely just take what’s on TikTok at face value, so if there’s much younger users seeing this content then this can shape their future ideas without them thinking that there are other options out there, if that makes sense. There’s not even TikToks pointing users in the direction of helpful resources, it’s just the “funny content”.
Are your feelings shared amongst your friends?
Yeah, and of course this is all personal experience so might be different for other friendship groups. But a lot of my friends also don’t know much about the parties. So if you think about it from that perspective, it’s great that politicians are managing to reach the younger audience and young voters through TikTok.
I do wish that the parties were being clearer with their messaging and policy information, because the content at present isn’t educational and my friends have said the same.
Cerys Davies works for Orlo.
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