As the US Presidential Election is almost only one month days away, TikTok has announced this week its new ‘Elections Guide’ that will assist users with informative guides and automotive voting details. Also, it works limiting the spread of misinformation and rumors.
As you can see above, the screenshots show that the guide will alert US users with registration prompts for the poll. It will also provide reliable information about the voting process in every state by SignVote, BallotReady, the National Association of Secretaries of State, and more.
According to TikTok:
“As with our COVID-19 resource hub, the election guide can be accessed from our Discover page and on election-related search results. We’ll also be linking to the guide at the bottom of videos relating to the elections and on videos from verified political accounts.”
Therefore, it’s very similar to the steps related to election awareness pushes that Twitter and Facebook are taking. You may expect that TikTok won’t have an influence in this matter, as more than a third of its users are 14 years old or younger.
However, still, it can have an influence. For instance, Snapchat also has a younger audience, reported that it has prompted more than 400K people to register for the 2020 vote by the in-app pushes. The audience of TikTok is even younger than Snapchat, yet any pushes in this matter can be useful and will help raise awareness of civic participation importance.
As we have seen, despite TikTok’s efforts, it has been caught up in political controversy. The negotiations about the application’s sale to an American company are still going, and it might still be banned entirely from the USA if it can’t separate from its Chinese mother company. The tension between the US and China has placed the application in global trade negotiations. So, even though TikTok doesn’t accept political ads and is just focused on news content, It is still involved in political discussions somehow.
So, it’s logical that TikTok to be in line with other social media platforms and provide informative pushes. Also, if they didn’t eventually have a big influence, it is still worth it. From PR perspective, TikTok is working to share right, helpful, and timely election information.
