A Content Analysis of the Most Viewed Videos on the Social Media Network TikTok in the 2020 American Presidential Election Campaign

TikTok je jedna od najmlađih društvenih mreža nastala 2018. godine, koja unatoč svojem kratkom životnom vijeku broji više od milijardu aktivnih korisnika. Kao i većina ostalih društvenih mreža i TikTok je prepoznat kao odlična platforma za različite oblike marketinga, uključujući i politički marketing. Posebna prednost TikToka jest u tome što ima potencijal doći do velikog broja ljudi, a većina korisnika su osobe mlađe od 30 godina. Primarni cilj ovog rada je istražiti kojem kandidatu su korisnici TikToka bili naklonjeni za vrijeme američkih predsjedničkih izbora 2020. godine, koristeći kvantitativnu analizu sadržaja 100 najpopularnijih videa, pod hashtagom #election2020. Autorica zaključuje kako su TikTok korisnici iznimno negativno portretirali Donalda Trumpa te su podršku češće pružali Joe Bidenu. Uz to, analizom je utvrđeno kako je najveći broj videa bio humoristične prirode, a usprkos pretpostavkama, velik broj analiziranih videa bio je informativnog i dokumentarističkog sadržaja.TikTok is one of the youngest social media networks created in 2018, which, despite its short lifespan, has more than a billion active users. Like most other social media networks, TikTok is recognized as an excellent platform for various forms of marketing, including political marketing. A special advantage of TikTok is that it has the potential to reach a large number of people, and vast majority of users are under 30 years old. Primary goal of this paper is to find out which presidential candidate did TikTok users favored during the 2020 U.S. pre-election campaign. Using the content analysis of the 100 most popular videos under the hashtag #election2020 that were published during the 2020 presidential election campaign, the author finds that TikTok users portrayed Donald Trump extremely negatively and supported Joe Biden more often. In addition, the analysis found that most of the videos were humorous in nature, and despite assumptions, large number of analyzed videos were informative and documentary content