The next election also passes through TikTok

With less than a month to go before the next elections, in a campaign with the most unusual timing ever, it seems that Italian politicians have found out about the existence of TikTok by turning social into the new electoral battleground. From the suggestion of a few social media managers directly to the screens of your smartphones, Giorgia Meloni, Carlo Calenda, Matteo Salvini, and Giuseppe Conte have chosen TikTok to try to reach a slice of the electorate that would otherwise be unreachable with traditional media, the one that is now far from Facebook and is beginning to abandon even Instagram. But if TikTok's policy prohibits paid political ads, candidates too must bow to the social network's algorithm, attempting the assault on "For You" with a series of approaches as diverse as they are united by a general sense of bewilderment. «I don't know how to dance, I look like a drunken bear,» says Carlo Calenda (10.1K Followers) in his first video in which he explains to the TikTok audience the reasons behind his landing on the platform, choosing that form of innocent transparency of someone who wants to create a direct line with the viewer.

If Calenda has chosen the path of car videos or literary disquisitions, a different opinion seems to be Giuseppe Conte (225.9K Followers), who since his first video dating back to late April has improved the quality of his content as only true TikTokers know how to do. No more excerpts from political broadcasts, for the upcoming elections the M5S candidate has chosen a theatrical emotionalism made up of a tight camera, white background, and pressing music. Turning to the center-right, awaiting the announced landing of Berlusconi «with content dedicated to this particular medium,» it is Matteo Salvini who dictates the law with 520.5K Followers, the highest number among all the candidates taken into analysis. The League leader's journey on the platform begins as early as 2019, leading him, over time, to post all kinds of content: there is a video with a dog carrying an Esselunga bag, one with an excerpt from an Avengers movie, and one in which Salvini looks ecstatically at a group of cows walking on a beach. All not too far from those group chats where people send pictures of Padre Pio and gifs with cups of coffee. Instead, for her social campaign Giorgia Meloni (93.6K Followers) has chosen a different path than her coalition colleague, opting for direct videos with her gaze fixed on the camera, excerpts from her rallies, and decidedly little light content. Of course, there is no lack of that Melonian theatricality that we have come to know in her speeches, as well as the video in which she prepares panzerotti.

But the net of the videos, two things are striking: on the one hand, there is a worrying lack of content, whereas between emotional videos and direct attacks on the opponent of the day there is very little talk of proposals and solutions; on the other hand, there is an abysmal disconnect between the candidates and the generation they would like to connect with. Reading the comments under the videos, it is much easier to find a critical or ironic comment than one in favor, which almost always remain the preserve of those accounts with no profile and an automatically generated username. Undesirable, but more importantly, inappropriate, politicians on TikTok are the perfect snapshot of the disconnect between politics and the younger generation, distant or simply disinterested in the polls. For its part, the platform has not been unprepared for the arrival of the elections, from combating fake news through a combination of human moderators and technology to the creation of a label that will mark all those contents deemed close to the electoral theme, allowing users to delve into the Elections them directly on the platform. Commendable initiatives, are necessary at a time in history when in between videos of a dog in the pool and the unboxing of a sneaker you might happen upon a speech by Giorgia Meloni.