Croatian TikTok: A battleground between pro-EU and anti-EU narratives

Gong, a Croatian democracy watchdog organisation and EDRi member, published an analysis of the political narratives on TikTok during the national 2024 election campaign. The research explores the political narratives and environment on TikTok in the pre-campaign and campaign period for the Croatian parliamentary elections. It highlights a vibrant and intricate political landscape on TikTok in Croatia, marked by a division between democratic and anti-democratic narratives aimed at swaying the platform’s younger audience.

TikTok is the fastest-growing social network in the world, particularly popular among people aged 16 and 24. Politicians and political parties have used the platform during the Croatian parliamentary election to spread their political campaigns, content and narratives. Given the platform’s extensive reach and its political use, it is important to monitor and understand the communication styles and topics shared during the electoral campaign.

In particular, with the recent rise in electoral support and digital presence of the Croatian, it is ever more crucial to investigate the role of such digital platforms in our democracies. Yet there is a lack of research and insight into how political actors and citizens use TikTok for political purposes.

Data shows TikTok plays a key role in Croatian politics

In response to this need, Gong decided to expand its electoral monitoring activities to include TikTok, focusing on political content on TikTok created by both official sources such as politicians and political party accounts (top-down political narratives), and unofficial sources, such as regular accounts that share political content (bottom-up political narratives).

By analysing 2,259 posts in the weeks preceding the parliamentary elections, Gong set out to identify which politicians and parties were using TikTok, determine how the topics in these posts were approached, and discern which content posed a threat to liberal democracy.

The findings validate these concerns, showing that TikTok is an important asset and tool for politicians and political parties, who are actively engaging with the platform. There is a strong presence of official political accounts with varying stances, consistently posting political content for Croatian TikTok users. However, more interesting is the fact that alternative and outsider politicians dominate TikTok, with the highest numbers of posts and followers.

This insight reveals that these politicians, often lacking official political party support, infrastructure, and traditional media presence, use TikTok to bypass media gatekeeping, and reach a wider audience. Regardless, it is important to note that there is a disparity between the popularity and activity of these official political accounts on TikTok and their actual electoral success in the Croatian parliamentary elections.

Gong’s recommendations on ways forward

The findings also reveal a critical gap in the regulation of digital political communication during elections, alongside a severe lack of obligations for political candidates to report on their social media activities.

Based on these insights, Gong prepared a set of recommendations aimed at raising awareness among the relevant national political institutions about the risks that unregulated political communication on platforms like TikTok poses to democracy and election integrity.

These recommendations were sent to the State Electoral Commission, Ombudswoman for Children and the Croatian national regulator for Digital Security Act, HAKOM, with the goal of enhancing their oversight and regulatory efforts. The recommendations call for improved monitoring of digital political campaigns, better protection of children and minors, as well as better collaboration between institutions to combat foreign influence. Additionally, they suggest obliging political parties and politicians to timely provide publicly available, machine-readable reports on the usage of their official social media accounts during electoral campaigns. Additionally, they suggest that official social media accounts of political candidates be publicly catalogued.

Gong plans to use these findings as a reference to advocate for greater transparency and accountability in political communication on digital platforms, especially during election campaigns, targeting relevant national political institutions and stakeholders.

Additionally, Gong will maintain its monitoring of digital platform usage by politicians and political parties, and will report instances of misuse and malpractice that threaten democratic procedures and values.

Contribution by: EDRi affiliate, Gong