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CityAndStateNY.com
March 2, 2020
The New
Tactic: TikTok Twitter is so 2018. Young candidates are hoping a video app can help them go viral with Gen Z. by A N N I E M C D O N O U G H
M
OVE OVER TINDER. There’s a new app that social media-savvy candidates in New York are turning to: TikTok, the video-centric platform that allows users to share short, often funny, videos set to music, which has made viral sensations out of its more successful “creators.” Love it, hate it or utterly perplexed by it, TikTok is just the latest social media platform that political candidates are using in an attempt to reach out to voters and spread awareness of their campaigns. A handful of young insurgents running for the state Legislature and for Congress are attempting to reach voters on the app, which is wildly popular with Gen Z – the generation born between the mid-1990s and the early to mid-2010s, many of whom are reaching voting age. Young challengers across the country are using the app to run for office, and in local races, especially, a bit of internet popularity can be valuable, said Joshua Tucker, a professor of politics and co-director of the Center for Social Media and Politics at New York University. “If you think that people have limited bandwidth for politics, except when we’re really close to elections, and then you think how much of that bandwidth is being sucked up by the 2020 presidential election – let alone, things going on
in the Senate and the House – if you’re farther downstream, trying to get any bandwidth in front of people is really tough,” Tucker said. “And so doing something like making a TikTok video, it’s something that at least potentially can get talked about. But it also has the potential of making you look cool, especially to a younger demographic.” For some candidates, TikTok has offered the one modern campaigning imperative that’s desperately sought but difficult to fabricate: internet virality. Everybody wants to be the next Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, garnering millions of Twitter followers and hundreds of thousands of retweets daily – and very few people have former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s resources to buy virality through memes posted on Instagram. Where underdog candidates can gain some ground, however, is through both cheap advertising on digital platforms like Facebook and Google, and organic – meaning not-paid – content on platforms like TikTok and Twitter. For young candidates who are already fluent in the language and trends popular on TikTok, the latter is not only free but can appear effortless. “It gives a tool to challengers who may not have as much money or as much name recognition when they go into the election
against entrenched incumbents,” Tucker said of campaigns using social media – especially platforms like TikTok or Twitter, which don’t allow political advertisements, and where the cost of content is just the labor involved to create it. Skyler Johnson, a 19-year-old Suffolk County Community College student, is running in a crowded Democratic primary this spring to replace retiring Republican state Sen. Kenneth LaValle on Long Island, with a progressive platform supporting proposals like the New York Health Act and reforming the prison system. When volunteers for Johnson’s campaign pressed him to sign up for TikTok, he was initially unsure but eventually embraced the idea, and posted a video poking fun at detractors who called his support for affordable medical care and climate change action “radical.” The video follows a popular format on TikTok of users filming themselves pointing at floating text boxes with music playing in the background. “I went to bed that night and it had about three likes, and I was happy that at least some people liked it,” Johnson said of the night in early January when he first posted the video. “I woke up to find that it had 300, and I was very surprised. By the end of the day it had 1,000 and I was very shocked as it continued to
