A meme of a guy wearing a pineapple on his head circulates on the Internet and immediately goes viral. Then, no one wants a pineapple on their head the day the big brands take it over. One wonders if the same thing does not await TikTok now that President Joe Biden appears there in all his candor.
Biden on TikTok is ironic at the very least. The Chinese-origin app has been banned from government phones in the United States. It’s the same thing in Canada, for exactly a year. That did not prevent the American president from arriving on the video platform at the beginning of February, immediately after the Super Bowl, and even making a (maligned) reference to the conspiracy theories surrounding the presence of singer Taylor Swift at this high mass of American football.
Biden on TikTok is obviously a strategy thought out by his communications team. But it does not come without risk.
To the left of the Democratic candidate for next November’s presidential election, people criticize the light and humorous tone of his publications while bombs are raining on Ukraine and Gaza. To its right, we recall the links that TikTok could still maintain with the Chinese government – the same links which led to its banishment from the government apparatus. Biden is being asked to uninstall the app, period.
Somewhere in all this, the Biden campaign is experimenting. We’re still looking for the right tone, the one that will stick in the minds of users of TikTok, the youngest social network in North America. The one where not only the “Swifties” come together, but the entire younger generation that the Democratic candidate needs to convince to vote on November 5 to beat his Republican rival (barely younger, but who betrays his age BY WRITING EVERYTHING IN ALL CAPS on a network, Truth Social, where most of his supporters are concentrated, portrayed as a caste of old reactionary conservative white men).
For Biden and the Democratic Party, this is no longer an issue: you have to be on TikTok. From less than a million in 2020, today there are 170 million American Internet users who regularly open the application on their mobile. Many members of Generation Z have made it their first source of information on current events. For better or worse, TikTok has (re)become a must-have.
Beyond Chinese malaise
In Canada too, state workers got fed up with the ban on using TikTok and decided to get around the rule. It’s simple: all you need is a second phone in your pocket.
This is particularly the case of Doctor Joseph Dahine, medical director of the quality, evaluation, performance and ethics department at the CISSS de Laval, who has started publishing short videos on TikTok again. in September, after an absence of not quite six months. This is because we must not leave all the room for disinformation, say delinquent TikTokers like him.
“I think we’ve come back a little, from this story of the evil Chinese social network,” explains Montreal digital media specialist and doctoral student in communications Nadia Seraiocco. She also does not fail to raise the contradictory behavior of both Canadian and American politicians in relation to social media. “We told Canada that Meta was a terrible platform, we created Bill C-18 [sur les nouvelles en ligne], but despite all the damage it has caused to the Canadian media, political parties continue to buy advertising on Facebook and Instagram. Probably this time, they find that the risk is no longer very great in using TikTok. »
TikTok, it must be said, has opened offices in the United States and Canada. The company invests millions of dollars in the work of content creators established across the continent, including in Quebec. It basically creates the illusion of a dynamic, entertaining and harmless social network.
“ Fake it till you make it “, says a popular adage in the American entertainment industry. This is perhaps how TikTok will interfere in North American customs. This is certainly the approach taken by Joe Biden on the platform with his videos where he does not pretend to be younger than his age, but where he plays the friendly and good-natured grandfather card to appeal to younger voters.
Obviously, Biden drew a card from the hand of former President Barack Obama, who had the official BlackBerry of the President of the United States in one pocket of his jacket and an iPhone with his Instagram account in another. “Seeing Biden on TikTok doesn’t surprise me too much, even if we are not immune to the risk,” continues Nadia Seraiocco. He plays the card of a statesman capable of being severe, but conciliatory. This is the opposite of Trump, who was fiercely against China. »
“Seeing the president on TikTok, I think that means that civil servants won’t be punished if they reinstall it on a phone other than the work one. » Even more so if the said president is re-elected on November 5.
The void to fill in old media
On the Internet, everything moves quickly. The emergence of TikTok as a credible social platform appears to have occurred in rapid advance, both in Canada and the United States. Its popularity is greater among Internet users aged 16 to 34. Facebook remains the social network most used to find out about current events for the entire population, but TikTok occupies a more influential role every day.
In 2023, according to a report published by the Reuters Institute, TikTok was the primary source of information for 5% of the Canadian population. It’s not much, but at the same time, it’s a lot, since this proportion is concentrated among the youngest adults – and it has tripled in three years. In the United States, TikTok was in 2023 a main source of news for 43% of people who do not consult traditional media, revealed a Pew Internet Research survey.
In short, TikTok fills part of the void left by older media, which have little presence on social networks due to lack of resources or due to reactions to the Online News Act. A void caused in large part by the political class itself, precisely, and which these days is rushing to fill it in person. Because TikTok, like Instagram, Facebook and all the others before it, is the place to be to be of the times.
Until it wasn’t. Because memes, as we know, never lie.