Аnalysis of political propaganda on TikTok in Belarus: tracking pro-regime, pro-democracy, and pro-kremlin narratives 

Аnalysis of political propaganda on TikTok in Belarus: tracking pro-regime, pro-democracy, and pro-kremlin narratives
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INTRODUCTION

The relevance and importance of studying social networks in the context of researching socio-political trends and civil society activity in social networks is due to the number of active users and the degree of influence of social networks on socio-political processes.

Social networks used as media are practically unregulated by Belarusian law and have wide opportunities for targeting certain groups of users. For example, the TikTok social network, according to the press service of this company, has overcome the bar of 1 billion active users worldwide in September 2021. Although the company’s claims are disputed by external experts (who expect the number of audience to be about 955 million active users in 2025), it is hard to argue with the fact that TikTok has a significant impact on the global information space.

Belarus is not the exception in this trend. According to advertising data of ByteDance Ltd. (the parent company of TikTok), as of early 2024, TikTok had 5.63 million users aged 18 and older in Belarus. This is 1,36 million more users than in the previous year and 2,55 million more users than in 2022. Given the number of users and the progressive dynamics in its growth, TikTok is an attractive platform for distributing content that creates trends and tendencies in Belarusian society. It has become a tool that not only brings people together for communication or entertainment, but also forms isolated social groups and public opinion in general (i.e. public moods, emotions, feelings, assessments, and judgments). The monitoring of the TikTok social network allows us to identify current topics relevant to society, predict the development of trends and respond to changing preferences of the audience in time.

The whole monitoring can be read and downloaded from this link.

Monitoring is available in English. 

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08.10.2024