Abstract
Chapter 17: Due to the increasing importance of visual images in politics politicians are currently turning their attention to TikTok for communicating with young voters. This new platform represents a hyper-postmodern aesthetic, based on visual components oriented toward virality, entertainment, humor, simplification, and performance art in order to communicate complex political issues in simple formats through the use of visual storytelling. Given that this is quite a new phenomenon linked to the idea of visual media as entertainment and playful technologies, the theoretical underpinning explores the spectacularization of politics and its consequences for political communication. We contextualize the use of TikTok as part of "pop-politics" and the use of "politainment" on social media. The research includes a quantitative analysis of the official TikTok accounts of the main Spanish political parties in order to measure to what extent they are employing politainment resources and formats in their videos and the impact that these entertainment visual narratives have on levels of engagement. Differences between traditional and new political parties in Spain regarding the use of the platform's main affordances are highlighted.
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