An academic paper is about to be published suggesting that TikTok is a propaganda machine for the Chinese government.
The paper couldn’t come at a worse time for the social media platform as it heads into the Supreme Court to try and stop a ban that would force the sale of its US operations or see it shut down for good.
TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has been on the charm offensive with incoming president, Donald Trump, hoping to reverse the ban. It has also filed a petition to block the law that establishes the ban. But this new paper will be fuel to the fire for those claiming TikTok is a national security risk as it is too closely tied to the Chinese Communist Party.
TikTok Displays Pro-Government Spin
A team from the Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University analyzed content on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. What the researchers found was that TikTok’s algorithm is less likely to push content that is critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) than competing platforms.
It also claims that a study of US users found a positive correlation between how much someone uses TikTok and how positive their views are of the CCP.
The findings are set to be published in the journal Frontiers in Social Psychology but have already been picked up by The Free Press. And they have also prompted a stern statement from ByteDance.
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Study Compared TikTok, YouTube and Instagram
The three-level study, which has now been peer-reviewed, looked at TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.
Typing in four politically-loaded key words – “Tiananmen,” “Tibet,” “Uyghur,” and “Xinjiang” – the team first looked at what content the respective algorithms delivered.
The researchers found that while TikTok might not deliver more pro-CCP content, it did deliver less anti-CCP content than the rival platforms. It also, interestingly, delivered more content that researchers say was irrelevant to the keywords.
The team next looked at engagement to see if this explained why anti-CCP content was performing less well. But it found that TikTok users “liked or commented on anti-CCP content nearly four times as much as they liked or commented on pro-CCP content, yet the search algorithm produced nearly three times as much pro-CCP content”. This didn’t happen on Instagram or YouTube.
The last element of the study looked at the impact the content was potentially having on users. The researchers surveyed 1,214 Americans to find information on their social media usage, and their opinion on China’s human rights record. What they found was that the more time users spent on TikTok, the more positive their attitude towards the CCP was.
Is TikTok a “Vehicle for Propaganda”?
The researchers came to the damning conclusion that “taken together, the findings from these three studies raise the distinct possibility that TikTok is a vehicle for CCP propaganda.”
But TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance has furiously denied this claim and has gone after the researchers for their methods. In particular, the social media platform claims that the use of “dummy accounts”, created by the researchers, skews the findings. Instead, the team should have examined actual TikTok users’ feeds, it says.
“This flawed experiment was clearly engineered to reach a false, predetermined conclusion,” TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes wrote in a statement. “Previous research by NCRI has been debunked by outside analysts and this latest paper is equally flawed. Creating fake accounts that interact with the app in a prescribed manner does not reflect real users’ experience, just as this so-called study does not reflect facts or reality.”
Last Ditch Attempts To Save TikTok
The paper comes as the lawyers gear up for the hearing and as the deadline for TikTok’s fate to be set – January 19th – creeps ever closer.
However, ByteDance’s executives may be counting on a reprieve from Donald Trump, who has voiced his support for the social media platform in past months despite being a fervent adversary in the past. The company’s CEO, Shou Zi Chew, was reported by CNN to have headed to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida for a meeting, but the outcome remains unknown.
With dramatic reshuffling expected in many Government departments, it may be that the very people pushing the ban for national security reasons could be out of a job. But it could also simply be down to how much favor Trump thinks he will gain by “saving” TikTok and whether his will is enough to push these security concerns aside.
