Study: Anti-establishment sentiment on TikTok: Implications for understanding influence(rs) and expertise on social media (DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2508)
People actively seeking conspiracy content involving anti-establishment sentiment-distrust in institutions like the media or health care-will find it regularly on TikTok and YouTube.
This sentiment rarely appears in finance, wellness or the general For You Page (which tailors the user's feed to their interests), which means casual users are unlikely to encounter it often, according to a new University of Michigan study. Less than 1% of all content on a typical For You Page expresses anti-establishment sentiment.
The findings raise questions about how these messages may shape public trust and influence society in the future.
TikTok is a popular platform used by about one-third of Americans and two-thirds of Gen Z. Researchers say anti-establishment sentiment can undermine the health of democracies, and social media have been blamed for spreading such content.
"We see that people who take the time to comment on anti-establishment sentiment posts tend to agree with the message in the video, which suggests that those who are drawn to this content are likely to be recommended more of it," said Tianliang Xu, doctoral student in the U-M School of Information and study lead author.
Researchers collected 26,783 video posts with 206,350 comments using the TikTok Research API for two years starting Jan. 1, 2022. Posts focused around three themes: finance, wellness and conspiracy theories.
One important question toward understanding anti-establishment sentiment is which institutions are the target of such sentiment. To address this question, researchers hand coded a sample of 50 posts which were predicted to contain the sentiment, and the following was observed: People were more likely to mention vague entities like "the government," "them" or "big pharma" than specific institutions, but some institutions like NASA are mentioned often.
Researchers found anti-establishment sentiment in about 45% of conspiracy posts, compared to just 4% in finance and 1% in wellness. While rare in everyday content, posts expressing anti-establishment sentiment in finance and wellness were more likely to spark comments, suggesting they may encourage stronger engagement, the study showed.
Interestingly, most comments agreed with the original post, even when it contained controversial claims. The findings highlight the need to better understand how repeated exposure to this type of content could influence public trust over time, researchers said.
The research focused on TikTok and YouTube, but the study's authors are exploring other platforms.
"While we expect that most platforms will not show anti-establishment sentiment content to an average user often, they may vary in how their algorithms show such content to interested users," said co-author Sabina Tomkins, assistant professor of information.
Ariel Hasell, associate professor of communication and media, also co-authored the study.
The paper, which received partial funding from the U-M Presidential Award for Understanding Democracy, will be shared at the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media next spring in Los Angeles.
