Description
How dangerous is TikTok as a propaganda platform? As a social media company with extensive ties to China, and access to billions of global users, there have been widespread concern that malicious state and non-state actors could abuse TikTok, to manipulate public opinion in the West. Yet, ostensibly, there has been little to no empirical research, about the effects that such influence operations might have, on users' attitudes and behaviour.
In this paper, I present the findings from a two-wave survey experiment (n=432), where I simulate the effects of a high-dosage Russian and Chinese influence operation, and measure their impact on the attitudes of American TikTok users.
There are three key findings:
1) Malicious foreign influence operations do not appear to be widespread on TikTok, at the moment; pro-Russian and pro-Chinese content make up less than 1% and 0.9% of median users' feeds, respectively.
2) Under high-dosage experimental conditions, Russian and Chinese propaganda are capable of producing small persuasion effects amongst its audience (Cohen's d=0.053-0.150). However, these effects do not persist for more than a week, which suggests that they may have limited ability to affect behaviour in the long term.
3) Finally, malicious foreign influence operations' effects appear to be heavily contingent upon the absence of relevant prior attitudes. This means that propaganda and disinformation produced by minor actors, may be substantially more potent, by virtue of audiences' relative ignorance of the countries and issues involved.
The findings of this study have particular importance, for the ongoing debate about the threat that TikTok poses to national security. Additionally, they contribute to the literature on combating fake news and disinformation, by highlighting the role of prior attitudes, in conferring resistance against hostile persuasion.
