Dances, Duets, and Debates: Analysing political communication and viewer engagement on TikTok

Launched in 2017, TikTok has rapidly gained global popularity, extending beyond entertainment to become a hub for ideological formation and political activism, revolutionizing the way politicians interact with constituents. Yet, despite extensive research on politicians’ use of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, TikTok’s distinct platform-specific languages and features have received limited attention. Its short video clips, algorithmic content recommendations, and mobile-first interface present new challenges and opportunities for politicians aiming to communicate effectively with society. This paper addresses this gap by providing a first examination of the ways in which U.S. politicians embrace and adapt to the TikTok platform. Employing a multimodal approach that studies video, text, and audio, we collect and analyse a novel dataset of TikTok videos created by U.S. Governors and Members of Congress to understand how they use comedic, documentary, communal, explanatory, interactive, and meta communication styles to connect with their audience. Our analyses reveal that U.S. politicians primarily use TikTok as a platform to communicate about political issues, often adopting explanatory and documentary styles to articulate their policies. However, the comedic style significantly boosts engagement, especially for female politicians, who see a fourfold increase in engagement when producing comedic content compared to male counterparts. This presents a challenge for politicians: balancing humor's allure with the seriousness expected from them. Our findings provide valuable insights into digital political communication on emerging platforms like TikTok and the role of multiple message modalities in harnessing online attention and engagement.