On TikTok, pop culture prevails over news and politics

TikTok is growing fast as a destination for news, but news and politics accounts make up less than one percent of accounts followed by U.S. adults, the Pew Research Center says.

Around half of all TikTok accounts followed by U.S. adults are influencers and creators, the study shows. Plus, content related to news and politics is considered rare, with only about 10% of the followed accounts that showed up in the study posting about these topics.

When Pew ran a similar study in 2022 on the people users follow on X, it found that 1% of accounts followed belonged to political figures, while 3% belonged to media outlets and journalists. These numbers are still small, yet they’re more significant than those from TikTok, where media pundits and outlets account for 0.4% of people followed.

This doesn’t mean that people aren’t learning about politics on TikTok. Pew says that 43% of users in its study followed accounts that discussed politics and current events, even if dedicated political and news accounts made up a small percentage of who they follow.

More so than other social media platforms, TikTok shows users a lot of content from people they don’t follow, thanks to its For You algorithm. And even if celebrities and influencers aren’t posting about politics, their occasional political declarations prove influential, especially in an election year.

According to a study from Harvard’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, celebrity endorsements of political candidates and causes really do tip the scales. For example, when Taylor Swift posted a link to register to vote on her Instagram story in 2023, 35,000 people registered to vote. Ariana Grande made voter registration booths available on her Sweetener tour in 2019, leading to another 33,000 voter registrations. This trend is true even for less traditional celebrities, like YouTubers — David Dobrik got 128,000 people to register to vote when he hosted a Tesla giveaway for anyone who checked their registration or signed up to vote at a specific link.

Instagram has taken a different route, deprioritizing political content altogether. Early this year, Meta stopped proactively recommending political content on Instagram and Threads, sparking pushback from creators. For existing Instagram and Threads creators who post about politics, their posts may not be shown to people who don’t follow them.

All the while, TikTok is staring down an impending ban due to concerns about the influence on Americans by the app’s Chinese parent company ByteDance. According to TikTok, 170 million Americans use the app, which is headquartered in Los Angeles, California.