Political communication on TikTok: from the feminisation of discourse to incivility expressed in emoji form. An analysis of the Spanish political platform Sumar and reactions to its strategy

Abstract

In a context of permanent electoral campaign, an increasing number of political communication specialists are trying to unravel the resources with which government officials and their parties seek to influence TikTok users. From a broad perspective, the theme is more current than novel, however, in the specific case of this research, an academic void is identified by combining the identification of idiosyncratic traits of the feminization of political discourse in TikTok with the study of reactions (text and emojis) that audiovisual content imbued with this trend provokes in users. The intention is to find out whether the inclusive tone of the feminized rhetorical style can be extrapolated to the Chinese-origin social network and, if so, whether its particular characteristics mitigate forms of incivility. To carry out the checks, the first seven months of activity on TikTok by the political platform Sumar with its leader, Yolanda Díaz, as the protagonist of most of the videos, are selected. The mixed methodology of analysis on audiovisual content and comments allows to verify that, although the new Spanish party does not apply a strategy perfectly adapted to the social network under study, the anti-polarization rhetoric and the storytelling techniques manage to neutralize extreme forms of flaming.