The attempted assassination of Donald Trump led to a surge in positive sentiment towards him on TikTok, with a significant increase in posts and views about him following the incident. However, this surge was short-lived, as users shifted their focus to other political figures like President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Data from Zelf, a TikTok analytics firm, shows a complex and ever-evolving conversation on the platform about various political topics and candidates, offering insights that could supplement traditional political benchmarking methods like polls and focus groups.
The data reveals that TikTok users prefer Biden’s stance on gun control over Trump’s, but favor Trump’s position on inflation. The conversation also focuses on the fitness of both Biden and Trump to serve as President, with negative sentiment towards Biden dominating the discourse before he stepped down. Zelf’s Net Promoter Scores for Biden, Trump, and Harris show significant differences in how positive or negative posts about them are received, indicating the varying levels of engagement and sentiment around each candidate.
While Zelf’s data provides valuable insights into TikTok discourse on political topics, the platform’s restrictions on data gathering limit the company’s access to a full range of videos. This highlights the need for transparency tools that make conversation monitoring data more widely available to journalists, researchers, and the public. In recent years, social media companies like Meta and Twitter have reduced access to such tools, making it challenging to track and understand the impact of digital conversations on political discourse.
As TikTok continues to grow in popularity and influence among U.S. audiences, monitoring and analyzing discourse on the platform could become an essential tool for political campaigns at all levels. Understanding how TikTok shapes public opinion and perception of candidates or issues could provide valuable insights for campaign decision-making, complementing traditional campaign analytics like polling and focus groups. By tracking and analyzing TikTok discourse, researchers and journalists can gain a deeper understanding of how social media is shaping political conversations in the digital age.
