The third speaker in this panel at the AANZCA 2025 conference is the great Susan Grantham, focussing on the 2025 Australian federal election campaign on TikTok. TikTok is now also a political campaigning tool; it was present in the 2024 US election campaign, and again in the 2025 Australian election. This study collected some 289 TikTok posts from the Australian Labor Party, 112 from the Greens, and 154 from the Liberals; the interest here is in the content and communication strategies that such content reveals.
The Greens had some 80 positive and policy-focussed videos; some 46 covered traditional political procedures like press conferences; 34 connected to TikTok trends; 7 were livestreaming gameplay and connected this with political messaging. Oddly, though, TikTok content from the Greens focussed a great deal less on environmental issues than on Greens policies for free dental care.
The Liberals posted some 130 videos (of 154) that engaged in negative campaigning, emphasising pop culture, traditional campaign events, and connecting with AI-generated brainrot characters; they also posted a truly horrific diss track. The overall emphasis was on shitposting, memification, and propaganda, but seemed to target the wrong audience.
Labor posted many traditional videos, pop culture content, TikTok trends, and hopecore content; about half of this content was positive. There were also a number of ‘thirst trap’ videos featuring youthful images of Anthony Albanese. Largely absent from this are the influencers that the campaign engaged with otherwise; influencer content lived organically on TikTok, but remained unconnected with official Labor accounts.
