Karissa is a senior reporter at Engadget, covering Meta, Twitter, TikTok, Snap and all things social media. Her interests include tech policy, internet culture, and all the ways our online activities shape our IRL selves.
As TikTok faces the possibility of a ban in the United States, a new study sheds light on the type of accounts US adults follow on the platform. According to the report, published by Pew Research , political content and news are only a small fraction of the accounts US adults follow in the app.
The report is based on an analysis of 227,946 accounts followed by 664 TikTok users who participated in the study. Of those accounts, less than one percent were “politicians, civic actors or traditional media outlets and journalists,” Pew found, noting that “the typical U.S. adult on TikTok follows no accounts in each of these categories.”
Instead, people were more likely to follow accounts that posted about entertainment and pop culture, humor and viral dance clips. “To the extent Americans’ followed accounts discuss politics, it tends to be mixed with other topics,” Pew writes. “Some 43% of all followed accounts that discussed politics or current events during the study period also discussed entertainment and pop culture.”The content of users' following feeds doesn't offer a complete picture of what people see on TikTok.
The question of what US users see on TikTok has been more closely scrutinized over the last year. Some lawmakers stepped up calls for a ban of the app last fall after TikTok critics used hashtag data to suggest that the app was disproportionately recommending pro-Palestinian content. The company said such takes were the result of “
While Pew’s report doesn’t touch on TikTok’s algorithmic recommendations, the authors note that follows are an important signal for the app. “User interactions with posts from the accounts they follow play a nontrivial role in shaping their For You page,’” the report says. “And studying these followed accounts can give us a better understanding on the content that users actively choose to look for on the platform.
Tiktok Political Content Accounts Type Of Accounts
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