A new study sheds light on TikTok and shows that the popular social media app may not show the full picture of China’s reality.
This includes any human rights violations that are taking place, and this makes it difficult to search on this platform. Whether you search for it using key phrases or keywords, the results are limited.
TikTok users from the US have shown that “anti-Chinese” terms also say less negative things about the country. This includes propaganda against the country’s leading political parties.
When similar searches were conducted on Instagram and YouTube, analysts found far more content.
To better represent their findings, the authors created 24 accounts across all the leading platforms. This would better represent the experiences of teenagers in the US. However, when they searched for certain key terms linked to controversial topics such as China’s human rights abuses, TikTok showed very little material.
Most of the content was positive or neutral, while Instagram and YouTube showed the exact opposite. So the more people use TikTok, the more likely they are to be exposed to China’s positive offerings, a stark contrast to what you see elsewhere.
Meanwhile, a representative of the TikTok app disagreed with the NCRI’s findings. Another survey, however, found that people who used the app daily over a long period of time had a more positive image of China than those who did not use the app.
TikTok disagrees. According to TikTok, setting up new accounts and searching for key terms does not reflect the real experience of users. He also mentioned that TikTok is not as old as others in the market, so much of the history they point to is not found on the platform.
A spokesperson for the ByteDance-owned platform even claimed that the study was useless and led to incorrect conclusions. He also mentioned that there were no peer reviews to confirm the results.
The information is important because of the timing. Remember, Biden’s administration has banned TikTok until it breaks away from its Chinese roots. The app is considered a national security threat and a decision must be made by January 19 before the full ban occurs.
The idea that TikTok spreads pro-China imagery among American users, especially teenagers, is a clever tactic. But Congress is well aware of this and considered it the main reason for banning the app before it was too late.
While the authors of this study agree that the results are not conclusive evidence that employees are using manipulation to portray China in a positive light, they do build on what the study has shown in the past, which involved promoting or downgrading content that is in China’s best interests.
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