TikTok in political campaigns: a case study of Colombia’s regional elections 2023
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5294/pacla.2024.27.2.1Keywords:
Political campaigns, Colombia, regional elections, social networks, TikTokAbstract
The use of TikTok in political campaigns has become a global and local trend because it makes it cheaper to finance candidates and allows the exploration of multimedia formats. In this direction, the objective of the article is to analyze the use of this social network in the regional elections of Colombia during 2023, having as hypothesis that independent of the geographical context, it influenced the election of the winning candidates, and with this, it strengthens the theoretical position of the interface laws. The methodology takes as a corpus the number of followers and TikToks made by the two candidates with the highest number of votes in each of the 32 departments and capitals of Colombia. The method integrates two strategies: a descriptive analysis of social networks that evidences the cases in which the winning candidate had more followers or communicative pieces on TikTok; and a canonical correlation analysis that establishes the relationship between the use of the social network and the geographical areas of the country. The discussion suggests that TikTok has become a fundamental tool for political campaigns that transcends territory and that this trend will continue to rise, due to the uniqueness of its algorithm and diversity of offers for user interaction. The article contributes to the literature on electoral campaigns, TikTok interface and influence in territorial contexts. Finally, a research agenda is proposed to deepen the transformations of this phenomenon for pop-political culture and social emotions.
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