TikTok in electoral communication: The case of Russian State Duma elections 2021

Abstract

The article presents the results of an empirical study of the features of electoral communication in the political cluster of TikTok channels during the election of deputies of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation of the VIII convocation, which took place from September 17 to 19, 2021. Using the method of content analysis, content strategies that were used by channels of a polar political orientation were identified and characterized. Thus, pro-government channels followed a strategy that we described as “television”: an attempt to use existing formats (mainly television) on a new platform (cuttings from television interviews), a combination of emotional and rational types of argumentation (as in the course of television debates), the use of topics informational character). The channels of the opposition candidates used a personalized “user” approach: publishing video messages to users on behalf of the candidates, the emotional nature of the videos, designed to involve subscribers in communication. This approach made it possible to involve users in the electoral discussion to a greater extent, which was confirmed by the results of calculating the user involvement coefficient. At the same time, the results of the study showed that neither the pro-government nor the opposition political forces were ready to be fully involved in the creation of content and adapt it to the unique formats of the TikTok service, and in the vast majority of cases they published content previously created for other communication channels. Thus, the potential of TikTok was only half used.