‘Communism made me do it’

Vollständiger Abstract

Worum geht es in dieser Arbeit?

TikTok is currently one of the most topical social media platforms in modern democracies due to its ability to reach large, young audiences and the concerns over outside influences and the algorithmic nature of feeds. In Finland, the parliamentary elections of 2023 marked an increase in interest for the platform. At the same time, polarisation is also a trending subject in European social media and society, with TikTok being discussed as one of the drivers of this division. This study investigates whether TikTok comments reveal polarisation through the formation of disruptive right-wing publics alongside publics acting against disruptions during election campaigns. The dataset of the study consists of TikTok videos with their comments from the Finnish parliamentary parties that were present on TikTok before the 2023 parliamentary elections. The comments are analysed through a framework designed to uncover right-wing discursive patterns, with the goal of identifying disruptive right-wing publics that form in the comment sections of TikTok videos. This study also seeks to uncover the precise language used by commenters and thus identify what constitutes different blocs through vocabulary choices. The results indicate that a large disruptive public consisting mainly of right-wing commenters was present on TikTok. The language used by these publics was clearly leaning towards a confrontational position, thus polarising the comment sections. The study also revealed that there did not seem to be a singular right-wing disruptive public, but rather one that was driven by the nationalistic Finns Party, as evidenced by the language present on other right-wing parties’ comment sections. On a broader scale the results indicate that disruptive publics have effects on both polarisation and discussion quality on TikTok, and that comment-based discussions are relevant spaces of identity work on a video-first platform.