TikTok Engagement and Radical Left and Right-Wing Populist Communication: Platform Logic, Populist Performance, and Audience Response

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This study examines how TikTok-native communication features are associated with audience engagement in radical left- and radical right-wing populist political communication. Using quantitative multimodal content analysis, it analyses 1,584 posts from the official TikTok accounts of 11 politicians across Europe and the United States. Engagement is measured through follower-adjusted views, likes, comments, favourites and shares, while platform adaptation is operationalised through humour, music, stickers, special effects and direct eye contact. The findings show TikTok-native features generate no uniform engagement benefits.

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