TikTok, the second most downloaded app in the world in 2019, which has seen its numbers explode during the confinement, the period during which millions of people have opened accounts Tiktok to escape the boredom. With 625 million monthly active users worldwide, including 4 million in France, the political figures in are also beginning to experiment with this platform so popular with generation Z , despite the background of suspicions of espionage, chinese.
The politicians are they able to understand the language Tiktok?
Thomas Derache, planneur stratégique within the agency OP1C, specialized in social networks ensures that they can no longer afford to move to the side of the expansion of this platform. Especially when one wishes to apply to a target youth. In fact, 70% of users of TikTok are under 25 years of age. Macron is well understood, and it is this that he has opened an account to try to show that he understands young people, congratulated on Tuesday the new graduates. He won in 2 days 8M views and 1.1 Million “likes”.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon was not slow to publish its response on Tiktok. Not surprising on the part of a politician at the forefront of new technologies, the first to use holograms in a meeting, also the first to use a video game platform Twitch. This modernity has earned him 30% of young voters, while Emmanuel Macron had only met a 18% of the young people at the presidential election.
His video Tiktok is filmed at the exit of the judgment of paris metro Republic. The leader of France Insubordinate took the opportunity to do a little more staging. By pointing to the name of the station, he made reference to his famous protest, “The Republic, it’s me!” and is inspired by the title Anissa of Wejdene for declamer with pace: : “ll call to you for your graduation, you’re talking to Macron ? But I called Mélenchon. You out of my sight, go see your Parcoursup”.
Mélenchon he knew how to speak in the language of “tiktok” that Macron? Not difficult, according to Philippe Moreau-Chevrolet, an expert in political communication, as the initiative of Macron, who is rather conservative on the social networks , and avoids the dialogue, has nothing to do with the format of the platform. The video is rather solemn, and the young people will respond to this publication with parodies, the humor, the critical sense…the two cultures confront each other without communicating one with the other: “it’s more than a generational divide, these are two different ways of seeing the world,” says Philippe Moreau-Chevrolet.
The format Tiktok open the door to critical thinking, opposed to a culture void of Instagram?
According to sociologist Olivier Glassey, a specialist in the digital use at the University of Lausanne, the format of the TikTok is interesting precisely because it offers a sense of fun, with a creative by adding. While on networks such as Instagram, the “influencers” millenials reinforce codes superficial, photoshop, images, filters, and publications sponsored , on Tiktok creativity is uninhibited that account: “it is fun to mimic choreography or to use texts to sync it… It is a dialogue.”
The young people of the generation Z, who are the first generation that really grew up with opportunities for information and communication between peers available, would be rather accustomed to the critical thinking of the word upright adults, and this could be conducive to the development of a personal opinion developed earlier.
Geopolitical risks: data Collection , censorship, and suspicion of espionage
Despite the opportunities offered by Tiktok as a platform for dialogue, some experts in geopolitics alert on the bad reputation of the platform. While the political figures in France are open accounts, other countries such as india or the United States want to prohibit it on their territory. Belonging to the chinese group ByteDance, Tiktok is an adaptation of the application to chinese Douyin for the western markets, created in 2017. It is a copy of Douyin, but it retains independent networks in order to comply with the restrictions and requirements of the censorship in china.
Tiktok, it could pose a national security problem, because the management of the implementation before its content would be effective to “format” an audience suggestible, putting its algorithms of recommendation to the service of the beliefs and values of the government of Xi Jinping.
In addition, China does not have the same concept of privacy and private life that Europe and the United States and Tiktok has been criticized for being too greedy in personal data. Experience indeed shows how TikTok is to collect information on the user’s smartphone (model, dimension of the screen, storage…), on the applications that are installed, as well as on other network-connected device such as a computer or a tablet.
In summary, Macron tries to make it seem to the parents of generation Z that he has it all figured out, young people use their initiative in the spirit Tiktok, by parodying the president, and the older of them , prefer to watch with suspicion the tools from China and are concerned about the risks of espionage and disinformation which could carry the platform.
Author(s): FranceSoir
