For example the city of Augsburg. It would like to be cool, but it is the city of Augsburg. So what is the city doing on Tiktok? First she has a young woman molested. The guy who sits down next to her on the stone block and tries to touch her is wearing black clothes, a black ski mask and a coronavirus cardboard sign in front of his chest. The virus is going around, is that supposed to mean. 222 likes. Next video: The divers of the Augsburg fire brigade do an exercise on the river bed of the Lech with an underwater camera. Quite an effort. 59 likes. How much easier is life on Instagram! Easy a photo Post from the Botanical Garden in Augsburg (“A dream in every season”), and the city gets more than 1100 likes for it. And it also presented itself as a beautiful city – not one where you can dive and get infected with Covid.
Granted, the comparison of the likes numbers isn’t entirely fair, because Tiktok is still opposite Instagram a comparatively small network. But he still indicates why politicians feel so comfortable on Instagram – in fast growing Tiktok is new territory, on the other hand, where the U-30 generation is killing their time and cannot get a foothold. This is also due to the mechanisms of the two platforms. What does this mean for today’s political debates? What for the future?
Many politicians are also involved in identity politics
With Instagram, a certain discursive culture is currently in full bloom that has been changing the world for years. As the app became more widespread, it evolved away from just serving as a representative photo album for users. It became a hub for pop culture – and because pop always plays with political ideas, Instagram also became more political. More and more people began to incorporate political symbols and codes into the photographic staging of their lives – or, conversely, to perceive attributes that already distinguish them as politically coded. For example body shape, gender characteristics or skin color. This development could be observed on various social networks, but none was as consistently committed to the sovereign staging of the self like Instagram. To show oneself for who one is, to be proud of what one is without regard to social stigmata and to celebrate it together with others who are also like that, has developed a tremendous political force since then. It is an important inflow of what is now often derogatory referred to as “identity politics”. But not only marginalized social groups benefit from it, but also those politicians who know how to make identity politics skilfully without arousing suspicion in this regard, because the identity that they associate with their person is that of the majority society.
Markus Söder, for example. He also leaves on his Instagram account the Bavarian nature speak for him. Whoever sees Söder sees home. The image grows overgrown with something primitive that is not rooted in his office or his merits, but in the unifying power of common symbols: the cross, the white and blue sky over Bavaria, the snack plate. Even a Markus Söder is only in front of her sublime beauty a man with a silly bicycle helmet – that’s the trick, the difference to old-school propaganda kitsch. He makes himself small in order to be absorbed in something bigger, from which an allegedly natural authority flows to him, namely that of the cycling, beer drinking Majority society.
On Armin Laschet’s Instagram account on the other hand, a lot of Armin Laschet is shown, mostly speaking in front of a lectern or at a desk. You see a man talking – the aesthetically pure appearance of a representative. His ego takes a back seat to his function, which means that everyone and no one may feel meant by his appearance. Laschet’s offer of identity is his policy. He does, Söder is. Laschet: around 63,500 followers. Söder: around 285,000.
Many politicians have understood this aesthetic populism and know how to use it for themselves. What recipes for success will emerge to hone Tiktok’s public image as a politician is still completely open. The parliamentary groups of the major parties are only gradually daring to join in “That was just fun of course” videos and “Always there” content on Tiktok. Tobias Hans (CDU) was the first Prime Minister to have an account, but he has already deactivated it. Some MPs at federal and state level dare. But many are not. There political discussions take place on the platform – just largely without politicians.
Empty phrases about European anthems are not the answer
The duet function plays an important role here, like scientists from the Technical University of Munich in one study have worked out. It allows users to post their video next to another and simultaneously comment on it on a split screen – this is how retweets work on Twitter, probably the most political social platform. This makes Tiktok much more interactive than YouTube, Snapchat or, above all, Instagram. It’s not so much about the individual staging themselves, but rather about dialogues between users. Less about that Be than about that To do.
How not to do it can be seen at Dorothee Bär’s. The Minister of State for Digital is an Instagram user at heart, you notice that right away. Resistance is futile against all the beautiful things that she puts aside on the photo app – mostly unsolicited because she cannot defend herself: among other things feminism, The program with the mouse”, the Bavarian Forest, God, the Bravo-Magazine and, oh yes, Armin Laschet. On Tiktok, however she reports on the occasion of the German EU Council Presidency, how important it is that “we pay more attention to digitization”, while the European anthem is playing in the background. At the latest when she announced that she wanted to discuss “questions of the new European cohesion”, the finger began to itch a lot. Suddenly she too is just a politician talking.
Lilly Blaudszun, the 19-year-old social media all-purpose weapon of the SPD, does better. your Video consists of the following message: “Tell me that you come from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania without saying that you come from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.” For example, she says, she has ducks as neighbors. Haha, funny. To support her, she does not call up identity-creating symbols like on Instagram – but all other users of the network. It starts a viral participatory trend, invites interaction. And gets around 175,000 likes for it (Bear with her European video: 75).
What does the politician get from her success as an influencer?
There is one problem with this, however. As a politician, what does Blaudszun actually get from initiating viral trends – so-called memes – and participating in them? What does the CDU parliamentary group in the state parliament of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania get out of it, half-funny because, if you please, still state-supporting Craft films to put on the net? Memes spread spontaneously when they’re funny and fun and then go away. For those who do not know the meme, they have no meaning. Of course, as a politician you can sing a shanty if that’s a big trend on Tiktok, you will break the hearts of all those who are currently riding the sea shanty wave, but everyone else is just wondering what the nonsense is should.
Symbols and codes on Tiktok are therefore constantly changing and only have meaning in temporary bubbles. You can’t take it and dress up your self with it. That is why identity politics for majorities does not work particularly well on the platform, despite attempts like Lilly Blaudszun’s Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania memes. This is why politicians don’t work very well on the platform. Politics, on the other hand, does. The users gossip about politicians or applaud them, complain about social problems, counter arguments, check facts or present the news. Plus pop music and tingling, what’s next. Only Tiktok’s algorithms, which fuel memes and wash strangers onto the phones of hundreds of millions of strangers overnight, know. Everything happens viral. Viewed from outside the digital machine room: chaotic.
What will come of it? Perhaps a kind of political fan culture – as a self-confident counterpart to the aestheticization of politics, which may have found its final expression in Instagram. Fan cultures can get big and powerful, especially on the internet. They can devour the object of their enthusiasm if it does not resist it – as already happened to Philipp Amthor (CDU) as memes leads an increasingly independent, ghostly second existence on the Internet. In many cases it is impossible to say whether the fans of this meme think the real politician is great or just kid him. Perhaps they applaud an exaggerated, alienated image of Amthor until the real politician approaches him. Donald Trump also works great as a meme because of his cartoonish personality.
The politicians who stage themselves on Instagram use symbols and codes. A politician who has become a meme, on the other hand, has transformed himself into a symbol – into a projection surface for algorithmically curated streams of ideas. That could have unpredictable consequences. But also be very fun.
How skewed is Instagram? In order to find out more about politics and politicians on Instagram, the SZ collaborated with the non-profit research collective Algorithm Watch the project #wahlfilter started. Together with you, we want to look into the black box of the Instagram algorithm in a large data research and look forward to data donations. You can take part here: sz.de/wahlfilter – many thanks!