Russian state-backed accounts on TikTok are publishing many more posts and reaching many more people in the run-up to the US election, according to a new report.
And it says exposure can affect voters’ willingness to “mobilize or take action” that could help target false or hyperpartisan content, the report states.
“(The accounts) focused on things that could be very powerful or very important issues for young voters,” the report’s author, Valerie Wirtschafter, told Global News.
These include US policies on Israel, concerns about immigration (the report found that Spanish-language positions had high engagement), and Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
The economist examined 70 accounts linked to the Russian state. She determined that they posted about twice as many times per day in 2024 as they did in 2023, increasing from two or three times to four or five times per day.
And many more people are seeing the posts. Economists found that interactions increased from three million per day in 2022 to 13 million per day in 2024. A small portion of the publications focus on gap issues.
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The report, from the Washington-based think tank Brookings Institution, describes a contrast in how Russian state-linked publications portrayed the two presidential candidates. Posts about Biden focused on his age and questioned whether he was fit for another term, while posts about Trump discussed his humor, his stance on NATO and his limited-edition shoe line.
“It was very one-dimensional in terms of the type of narrative,” Wirtschafter said, telling Global News that TikTok accounts also raised concerns about Biden’s handling of classified documents, while no posts mentioned Biden’s handling of them. Trump.
“There is a real incentive or a real interest in Russia to try to push these issues,” he said, because of the potential “momentum gains” Russia would receive if Donald Trump were elected, since he has a friendlier stance toward Russia than Biden. .
The report warned that TikToks may not change voters’ beliefs, although they “may influence voters’ willingness to mobilize or take action.”
“It’s not necessarily about persuasion but about mobilization,” meaning the videos could convince people not to vote for Biden if they already had doubts about him, Wirtschafter said.
The US lawmaker recently voted to force ByteDance, which owns TikTok, to sell the video app or not operate it in the US over fears that ByteDance would share users’ personal information with the Chinese government. ByteDance says it will fight the decision.
One economist said an American company that owns the platform would not solve the problem of Russian videos because misinformation and disinformation would still be published.
“Engagement and timely debunking of these narratives, where possible and appropriate, remain critical,” he wrote in the report.
He said it is important to flag sources as affiliated with the Russian state and have other users and platforms flag and correct falsehoods.
He also suggested that Russian activity on TikTok would only grow.
“My feeling is that this is not yet a fully developed space for accounts affiliated with the Russian state.”
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