The TikTok age meets the populist age - here's what is behind Burnham's videos

Where his predecessor Keir Starmer looked stiff on camera, Burnham pulls pints, ranks pub snacks with the Chancellor and turns up on the channels of TikTok creators with millions of followers.

While some have dismissed Burnham’s TikToks as cheap gimmicks, he seems to be accomplishing the impossible: connecting with young voters without coming across as cringe. At the very least he is reaching them.

Burnham has company. From Nigel Farage and Donald Trump to Zack Polanski and Zohran Mamdani, a growing number of political figures have won large followings on social media by breaking with the polished manner of the professional politician.

Their politics could hardly be more different, but they have all understood that in today’s attention economy, transgression is the new currency.

Transgression pays

Why does transgression pay? Part of the answer lies with voters. When so many have given up on the political class, there is a large audience for any candidate who does not behave like a politician. In a populist age, bad manners are a badge of authenticity.

The other part lies with social media platforms. As we argue in a new article on Argentina’s President Javier Milei, TikTok’s preference for entertainment creates a natural fit for the shock and provocation of transgressive content.

Milei, a self-described anarcho-capitalist who won the Argentine presidency after years of economic crisis and collapsing trust in the political class, practised transgression by brandishing a chainsaw at rallies to show what he would do to public spending. He also called politicians rats, parasites and thieves, screamed at journalists and mocked opponents with obscene gestures.

The strategy paid off. Through an analysis of nearly 400 of his TikTok videos, we demonstrate that displays of bad manners drove engagement more than his attacks on the state or his defence of the free market. Ideology did not go away. Libertarian ideas appeared in over half his videos, more often than any other content. But those ideas reached voters largely because of the bad manners around them, not the other way round.

Our findings confirm what many suspected: TikTok gives politicians an incentive to break the rules of political conduct, rewarding norm-breaking performances with attention precisely at a time when norms are seen as the property of a discredited political class. The TikTok age meets the populist age, with far-reaching consequences for political communication.

A new age of political communication

TikTok may still bring to mind silly dances, but it is the fastest growing platform for news and information, particularly among 18 to 24 year olds. Its influence is spreading further, as other platforms adopt its short video format and personalised feed in what has been called the Tiktokification of social media.

As we enter a new era for political communication, and for as long as the appetite for politicians who do not sound like politicians lasts, we anticipate that transgression will become an increasingly attractive template for politicians across the ideological spectrum. Get the popcorn ready.

Not everyone has caught on, however. Our analysis of the recent Holyrood election found that Scottish parties and their leaders were still doing politics the old way: their TikTok videos consisted mostly of policy detail read to camera, with almost no emotion, humour or informality.

At a time when populism and polarisation have filled politics with anger, that kind of restraint may feel reassuring, but on platforms that reward engagement above all else, it means being ignored. It also means leaving the field to the radical right, which so far has proved much better at playing by the platform’s rules.

Some mainstream parties seem to think that the answer to a politics flooded with anger is to drain their own communication of feeling. It is not. Restraint should not be equated with responsibility. Boring, as we argued, is not a virtue. The cure for a politics flooded with anger is not less emotion but better emotion. As Mamdani—and Obama—understood, hope can be just as stirring.

Views are not votes, followers are not supporters

Politics on TikTok has costs as well. It reaches audiences that other platforms and traditional media no longer do, but it reaches them as individuals rather than as part of groups, networks or at least hashtags. TikTok’s For You feed serves each user a personalised stream selected by algorithm, based first and foremost on what they have watched before, and to a much lesser degree on who they follow or know. That raises a question about the kind of politics TikTok makes possible.

Mamdani’s campaign is instructive. His TikToks drew millions of viewers, but his rise from unknown assemblyman to mayor of New York took a massive ground game of over 100,000 volunteers knocking on doors. Turning attention into votes still takes bodies on the ground.

Turning votes into power is harder still. Obama arrived in the White House in 2009 with 13 million email addresses and two million members of his campaign’s social network, but did little to preserve that network or to turn the people he had mobilised into people who were organised. When he needed them, in the fight over health care and the 2010 midterms, the movement that had elected him wasn’t there to put up a fight.

Historically, the kind of change that disaffected voters are demanding today, whether from Mamdani, Milei or now Burnham, has depended on a strong base. Taking on the powers that be requires organised support behind the leader, not just an audience in front of him.

Announcements don’t equate to policies, views are not votes, and followers are not supporters (they are no longer even central to algorithmic reach). Will millions of viewers who never come together as one force anyone to give ground? And when Burnham comes under pressure from the markets, the press or his own MPs, will his viewers be there to hold him up?

The danger for Burnham is that the performances remain performances, that transgressions on camera never become the real change voters have been demanding, and that he becomes the seventh prime minister they sack for failing to deliver it. This is a risk not only for Burham or the Labour party but, if short-term hope gives way to further disaffection, also for democracy itself.

Ana Ines Langer is Professor of Political Communication and Dr Lluis de Nadal Alsina is a Lecturer in Media, Culture and Society at the University of Glasgow