Washington
CNN
—
TikTok is probably not as sizzling a spot for politics as many appear to suppose.
The eye dedicated to TikTok as a strong pressure in US politics — for higher or for worse — doesn’t appear to match up with the expertise of most TikTok customers, in accordance with new survey data released Wednesday by the Pew Analysis Middle and the John S. and James L. Knight Basis.
Because the short-form video app has surged to 170 million US customers, politicians have flocked to TikTok in hopes of wooing younger voters. Former President Donald Trump joined TikTok last week, amassing 6 million followers in a matter of days. President Joe Biden’s marketing campaign launched on TikTok in February and has posted greater than 200 movies — although the marketing campaign’s following is only a fraction of Trump’s at 373,000.
Different politicians, in the meantime, warn that TikTok’s hyperlinks to China by its dad or mum firm imply the Chinese language authorities might theoretically try to influence US politics on a large scale, if it ever accessed the private information of TikTok customers. (TikTok denies it has ever given the Chinese language authorities US consumer information and is suing to block a law Biden signed this spring that might ban the app from the US.)
However the image painted by Pew’s newest surveys suggests politics remains to be only a small a part of what the platform has to supply. Many TikTok customers within the survey mentioned they care way more about leisure, tradition and buddies. They don’t care as a lot about — or might not even need — political content material of their feeds, in accordance with the survey, a discovering that’s per customers of Fb and Instagram (however not on X, previously Twitter, the place information and politics have traditionally dominated).
Pew mentioned its analysis concerned 10,287 grownup web customers in the US who had been surveyed from March 18 to March 24. The outcomes had been weighted “to be consultant of all US adults by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, training and different classes,” Pew added.
The analysis casts a barely completely different mild on TikTok and different social media platforms broadly described as the brand new city sq. — the place politicians and politically engaged People go to interact in cultural debate, rating political factors and supposedly affect the remainder of the citizens.
Actually, the overwhelming majority of the US TikTok customers surveyed didn’t cite politics as a serious and even minor cause for utilizing the app, and simply 12% reported posting any political content material in any respect.
“Like on different platforms we’ve studied, on TikTok, politics for most individuals takes a backseat to issues like leisure and connection,” mentioned Colleen McClain, a Pew researcher and co-author of Wednesday’s examine.
Many TikTok customers, roughly 4 in 10, mentioned they do see a minimum of some politics content material on the app, in accordance with the survey.
Nonetheless, politics ranked useless final amongst causes folks cited for utilizing the platform, implying that the lion’s share of customers should not searching for out political content material, to the extent they see any in any respect. Solely a 3rd of TikTok customers mentioned they use the app to maintain up with politics; 41% mentioned they use it to get information.
In contrast, 95% mentioned they use TikTok to get leisure; 62% mentioned they use it to have a look at product critiques or suggestions; and 53% mentioned they use it to maintain up with sports activities or popular culture, the outcomes present.
Individuals who don’t submit about politics on TikTok additionally had sturdy views about why they don’t accomplish that: Greater than half of that group, 56%, mentioned they don’t care about politics, whereas as a lot as 47% mentioned politics simply doesn’t belong on TikTok.
These figures spotlight the problem for political campaigns in reaching younger voters on TikTok.
Earlier Pew analysis, from a survey accomplished in September 2023, discovered that 40% of TikTok customers determine as Republican or lean Republican, whereas 52% are Democrats or lean Democratic.
With Trump becoming a member of the platform, these numbers might doubtlessly shift, in addition to the ideological tilt of content material on the platform or folks’s perceptions of it. A TikTok official informed CNN final week that pro-Trump content material tends to attract much higher engagement than pro-Biden content material, though other recent research has steered that a part of Biden’s lackluster efficiency on TikTok could possibly be associated to his determination to signal a potential TikTok ban invoice — angering even many liberal TikTok customers — in addition to his administration’s strategy to the warfare in Gaza, which polls unfavorably amongst younger voters.
Proper now, 22% of TikTok customers say content material on the app is usually liberal, whereas 6% say it’s principally conservative, in accordance with Pew’s newest survey. However that doesn’t essentially inform us a lot: Pew reported related assessments of Fb and Instagram by these platforms’ customers. And whereas 28% of TikTok customers took a place on the ideological lean of the app’s content material, way more, 48%, say it doesn’t tilt both manner or that they aren’t positive.
It’s maybe little shock, then, that at the same time as US politicians rail in opposition to TikTok for threatening US democracy, large majorities of TikTok customers — 82% — mentioned the app both has no impression on or is usually good for democracy. TikTok customers who determine as Republicans had been barely extra seemingly than Democratic TikTok customers to say TikTok is unhealthy for US democracy, however solely by a slim margin of seven share factors.
These numbers distinction sharply with a surprising shift in attitudes towards X since Elon Musk bought Twitter in a $44 billion acquisition in 2022, maybe reflecting Musk’s polarizing strategy to managing the platform since then.
In line with Wednesday’s analysis, Republican customers flipped from overwhelmingly viewing Twitter as principally unhealthy for democracy in 2021 to overwhelmingly viewing X as principally good for democracy in 2023 and 2024.
“Prior to now three years, the share of Republican customers who say X is usually good for democracy has roughly tripled, and it’s persevering with,” McClain mentioned. “It is a dramatic shift. And the general sample we see here’s a little bit completely different than on different platforms.”
Simply 17% of Republican Twitter customers mentioned the platform was principally good for democracy in 2021. By 2023, that determine had risen to about half and is now at a excessive of 53%, Pew mentioned. What’s extra, Republican customers who submit about politics on X had been way more prone to declare in the present day that their views are welcome there (54% versus 33% for Democrats). Adverse views of X have elevated amongst Democratic customers over the identical timeframe and continues to pattern adverse, McClain mentioned.
“Views of X and democracy are deeply partisan,” the Pew examine mentioned. “Republicans are about twice as seemingly as Democrats to say it’s good for democracy. Democrats are 3 times as seemingly as Republicans to say it’s unhealthy.”
Pew’s analysis doesn’t speculate on why Republican customers of X have skilled a change of coronary heart in regards to the platform. However the shift coincides with probably the most consequential enterprise choices within the firm’s historical past and its aftermath — the choice to promote to Musk, who by layoffs, coverage adjustments and extra has radically reshaped a platform as soon as seen as central to information and politics.
Throughout his possession of the platform, Musk has claimed he has unwound censorship of conservative speech and welcomed again customers who had been previously suspended for selling hate speech and for different violations of Twitter’s phrases. He has himself indulged in antisemitic conspiracy theories, rolled back protections for customers from marginalized communities and amplified discredited election claims, prompting a backlash from advertisers and civil rights teams. And his adjustments to the platform’s verification badges, which prompted an initial wave of high-profile account impersonations, made it tougher for customers to know if a star or model account was the true factor or if it had merely paid for the veneer of authenticity.
With Fb, Instagram and TikTok, the predominant response by customers is that these platforms have little to no impression on democracy, McClain mentioned, however the reverse is true for X.
Whereas that in all probability gained’t cease political campaigns from flooding the zone on each platform they’ve entry to in an try to achieve voters, it’s a reminder that blasting a message out on social media isn’t the identical factor as getting folks to hear.