Straight News: The Biden campaign has also entered the social media TikTok account, Mr. Guan, what is your observation on this?
Guan Yao, Special Commentator: Obviously, this is a big move by the Biden campaign to attract a new generation of voters in the United States, especially young voters, and is part of his campaign strategy. It should be said that we are at the beginning of an election year, there are many uncertainties, and there are still many unknowns about the direction of the election, but at least for the moment, the situation is quite unfavorable for the incumbent president. Biden has fallen behind his sworn rival Trump, who has been riddled with lawsuits, in several swing state polls. The phrase "old man with a bad memory" in the newly declassified prosecutor's report detonated the so-called "aging" storm and made Biden disgraced. A new headline in the Atlantic Monthly expresses the mainstream sentiment in American society at the moment: Can Joe Biden Squash Concerns About His Age? Can Biden calm the outside world's worries about his age? The Washington Post has publicly complained that the Democratic Party lacks a "Plan B" in the election, so the Biden camp urgently needs to make moves to change at this time.
Judging from the launch time and content release, the Biden campaign team obviously regards the opening of the TikTok account as a big event, which is well-designed and full of network feeling. Biden deliberately chose to make the official announcement during the advertising time on Sunday night between the "Super Bowl" American football finals. The Super Bowl Finals, along with the intermission entertainment and even the advertisements released on television, are the equivalent of the Spring Festival Gala for Americans, and are the number one attention platform. The 27-second ad, in which Biden himself quickly answered questions from the Super Bowl, also became the first short video released by Biden's TikTok account "BidenHQ", which received 6 million views on the first day of its launch on Monday, and the current number of views is 6.57 million. On the first day of Biden's appearance on TikTok, the account released a total of four short videos, but the other three did not reach "100,000+" views, attracting 67,000 fans on the first day. It should be said that the figures for the first day were unsatisfactory and tepid. In comparison, Biden's social media X, the predecessor of Twitter, has 38 million followers, which can be described as a huge gap. Even on the TikTok platform, Democratic Internet celebrity Rep. Jeff Jackson has 2.5 million followers, and the Biden team has a lot of pressure to attract followers on the TikTok platform.
But the Biden campaign doesn't seem to care about the gains and losses on the first day of its debut, or at least the posturing. Rob Vlaherty, deputy manager of the campaign, said in a statement yesterday that Biden's TikTok debut has received more than 5 million views and is still rising, testifying to the commitment and success of our continued efforts to find innovative ways to reach voters. So in my opinion, the Biden campaign is indeed putting the TikTok platform at the core of its canvassing strategy, which is actually in line with Biden's governing thinking.
Straight News: Why did Biden put TikTok at the heart of his canvassing strategy?
Guan Yao: According to a statistic from the "President of the United States" project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in the first three years of the president's tenure, Obama held 66 press conferences, Trump held 52, and Biden held the least number of press conferences, with only 33. In this regard, the explanation given by White House spokeswoman Pierre yesterday was also to talk about the entry into TikTok, saying that because Biden continues to explore new media methods, there are fewer press conferences. The Washington Post has even reported that Biden is more willing to accept and arrange interviews with social media influencers than traditional media, because the latter generally do not ask tough and challenging questions, the content is easier to control, and there is a guarantee that it will reach a specific audience in the vertical field.
Why is TikTok at the core? The Washington Post couldn't be clearer because of its large user base, which has become a powerful tool for candidates. TikTok has 150 million U.S. users in 2022, and its CEO Zhou Shouzi confirmed at a Capitol Hill hearing last month that the latest users have reached 170 million, what does this mean? Because of the younger user base, it is no exaggeration to say that TikTok is almost 100% covered by American teenagers. In fact, Biden personally felt the help of TikTok in the last election, and hundreds of short video bloggers collectively settled on TikTok, which is considered a key move for Biden to win the election. According to the "Washington Post" report, two years ago in the midterm elections, the White House designed a big move, inviting 10 TikTok Internet celebrities with a total of more than 67 million fans to visit Washington, and even moved out former President Obama to explain the background of the election, and Biden himself also received these Internet celebrities at the White House for an hour.
Biden chose the time for the "American Spring Festival Gala" to enter TikTok, but his planning and preparation took longer and was more elaborate. When the Democratic Party reviewed the last general election two years ago, it formulated a so-called re-election strategy, with a special emphasis on significantly increasing platform investment and promotion efforts, and promoting Democratic supporters to retweet and promote political ads to their online friends on social media platforms such as TikTok and WhatsApp. Just last month, the Biden campaign officially announced that it was hiring a director of digital collaboration, whose main responsibility is to work with TikTok and other social platform content bloggers to amplify the effect of Biden's speech and reach the core constituency. Daniel Dax, founder of Palette, a consulting firm that helped coordinate TikTok influencers' trips to Washington, analyzed that if everyone still had questions about this in the last election: Can influencers influence political elections?
Straight News: Will TikTok's Pressure Ease in the U.S.?
Guan Yao, Special Commentator: We must emphasize this fact, when the US and Western media, especially the US mainstream media, report on Biden's entry into TikTok, they will add another half of the title to emphasize the so-called "security concerns", which actually indicates that TikTok's operational pressure in the United States will not be substantially eased. Against the backdrop of political polarization and intensifying bipartisan rivalry in the US election year, it cannot be ruled out that this kind of unwarranted political repression will intensify. We saw that TikTok CEO Zhou Shouzi and other social media bigwigs went to Capitol Hill last month to testify, only he was singled out by Republican anti-China lawmakers for humiliating cross-examination, which can be called a rehearsal of this bottomless suppression.
It should be said that President Biden's entry into TikTok is itself a rebellion against his policy stance. Two years ago, Biden signed an executive order stipulating that 4.5 million federal government employees are not allowed to use government agency devices to use TikTok on so-called national security grounds, and government agency devices must uninstall TikTok, so is Biden himself considered a government employee?
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has even enacted regulations requiring TikTok's foreign shareholders, more specifically, TikTok's Chinese operator, to withdraw their shares. Yesterday, there was also a question about this, to which the White House spokesman replied that the White House is still evaluating the CFIUS order.
But in response to that Internet celebrity expression, saying no, the body is very honest, I think Biden's latest actions say it all. Americans also like to say, if you can't beat it, join it. Previously, the US media even reported that the Democratic Party had already issued an internal warning to Biden that excessive suppression of TikTok may affect the Democratic Party's election layout.
In this sense, TikTok resists the pressure to do its best, and serves global customers, including American users, with sustained, stable and high-quality innovative operations, which is its most effective tool to resist all kinds of unwarranted political smears and suppression, and it is also the capital to change its life. In the past, TikTok has come this way, and tomorrow, it will continue to prove it.
Author丨Guan Yao, special commentator of Shenzhen Satellite TV's "Live Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan".
Editor丨Guo Jinchi, Editor-in-Chief of Shenzhen Satellite TV Direct News