Our sample of political content shows how campaigns and individuals have been using the video-sharing platform * UK general election live: latest updates * Live tracker: UK general election results 2024 If a week is a long time in politics, the five-year gap between UK elections is an eternity. The political landscape has changed dramatically since the Tories’ landslide victory in 2019 – but so too has the social media landscape. In 2019 TikTok was, according to a Guardian explainer, “a video-sharing app which has become phenomenally popular with teenagers”. Continue reading...

In some constituencies – often with large Muslim populations – a parallel viral campaign focuses on emotive issues such as Gaza that rarely feature in national coverage When Keir Starmer was interviewed for the Sun’s YouTube live stream last week, only about 10,000 people tuned in to watch him pledge to get tough on illegal immigration. Under pressure to prove he would speed up deportations, the Labour leader singled out one example in particular: “At the moment people coming from countries like Bangladesh are not being removed because they’re not being processed.” Continue reading...