TikTok is the strongest and fastest growing social network for over a year and a half now. And also: TikTok is becoming an increasingly important source of information and newsespecially for those under 25. In Italy, many young and very young people will go to vote this year for the first time, and many of them are interested in talking about politics and also to learn more about politics.
In summary: young people are on TikTok, looking for news on TikTok, looking for political news and many of them will go to vote for the first time on 25 September. Putting all these concepts together, combining them together, one would expect the parties to compete to be on TikTok and win those who will be the voters of the future. And instead.
The witness
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by Emanuele Capone
The parties on TikTok: a lot of center-right, very little center-left
Instead, taking a ride on TikTok you realize that this is definitely not the case. And also that the younger of the social networks somehow reflects the older platforms: like on Facebook and Instagramhere too there is a stronger presence of the center-right and minor parties and a much smaller presence of the center-left.
At the beginning of the second week of August, there is no official account of the Democratic Party on TikTok, there is no Enrico Readthere is no Carlo Calenda nor is there Action. Which partially remedies with a profile called Shareholders, which however is not entirely official and in any case collects just under 250 followers.
On the other hand, Matteo is doing very well Salvini (about 452 thousand followers), which he is always very attentive to social dynamicsand Giorgia Melons (almost 64 thousand followers), while Silvio Berlusconi has no profile. As for the parties, there is no League, there is no Forza Italia and neither is there Brothers of Italy, which however can count on a fanpage with over 14 thousand followers.
Among others, neither Matthew appears Renzi nor Italia Viva (but there is the Renziani profile, with almost 13 thousand followers), while both the Movimento 5 Stelle (6290 followers) and Italexit (which however does not have a page) stand out: the two leaders, Giuseppe Conte and Gianluigi Comparison, have been good at capitalizing on one the consensus obtained as prime minister and the other the dissent against the restrictions linked to the pandemic. To date, Conte has over 152 thousand followers and Paragone over 25 thousand.
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by Pier Luca Santoro
The elections on TikTok, seen by TikTok Italia
Despite significant absences, the issue of elections is important for all social networks, increasingly reflecting what is happening in society, whether they like it or not. And TikTok is no exception: to date, the hashtag # eventi25settembre has collected about 430 thousand views, more or less like # eventipolitiche2022, while #electionspolitics is over 3 million and the generic #elections has exceeded 70 million views. The ranking of keywords linked to the leaders of the main parties reflects their presence on the platform: #giorgiameloni around 144 million views#matteosalvini at 78 million, #silvioberlusconi at 65 million and #enricoletta at just under 3 million.
And if the theme of the elections is important, the theme of the disinformation: “We are committed to protecting the integrity of our platform and we have a dedicated team working to protect TikTok and its community in view of the upcoming Italian elections – the company explained to us – We prohibit and remove electoral misinformation”, also ” collaborating with accredited fact checkers, such as Facta News for Italy “. What does it mean? That, even if “TikTok is not a reference point to consult the latest news and we do not accept paid political adswe are committed to combating the dissemination of false or inaccurate information, including by supporting our users with authoritative information regarding issues that are important to the public, such as political elections ”.
Precisely on this, from TikTok Italia we have anticipated that “we are working to develop new features to offer our community official in-app information on the Italian elections “. From what we have been able to understand, they should be available in time for the start of the election campaign (which officially kicks off on August 26) and the expression “in-app” suggests the presence of an internal section of the app dedicated to voting operations, which users who research the topic will probably be directed to, a bit like what happened for the coronavirus.