2025 Australian Federal Election Party Communication on TikTok

TikTok’s rise in popularity, especially among younger and first-time voters, has drawn Australian politicians into online battlegrounds in pursuit of new voter bases. Political actors, however, are grappling with this unfamiliar shift towards informal and often unprofessional political communication. This begs the question, how do Australian political parties adjust political messages to fit the TikTok medium, and how do they perform relative to each other? During the 2025 federal election campaign period (28 March to 2 May 2025), we examined 517 TikTok posts by four political parties – Australian Labor Party, the Liberal Party, the Greens, and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation. Using a qualitative thematic multimodal analysis, supplemented with descriptive statistical tools, we manually analysed the content and performative elements of each post to determine how parties used TikTok in their campaigns. Our findings suggest that parties are using TikTok to engage in a performative contest over who can most effectively appeal to young audiences, without necessarily engaging in substantive political discourse. We position the heightened use of TikTok within the broader political debate surrounding social media regulation and youth political disillusionment, calling for the implementation of standards that constrain and monitor social media campaigning, particularly when targeted towards young voters.TikTok（TikTok）的走红，尤其在年轻群体及首次投票选民中拥有广泛影响力，已将澳大利亚政界人士拉入在线竞选战场，以争夺新的选民基础。然而，政治行为主体正艰难应对这种转向非正式且往往非专业化政治传播的陌生变革。这不禁引出核心议题：澳大利亚各政党应如何调整政治讯息以适配TikTok平台生态，且各政党间的竞选表现存在何种差异？ 本研究于2025年联邦大选竞选周期（2025年3月28日至5月2日）内，对澳大利亚工党（Australian Labor Party）、自由党（Liberal Party）、绿党（Greens）以及宝琳·汉森一国党（Pauline Hanson’s One Nation）四家政党发布的517条TikTok帖子展开分析。研究采用定性主题多模态分析法，并辅以描述性统计工具，手动解析每条帖子的内容与表演性元素，以探明各政党如何在竞选活动中运用TikTok平台。 研究结果显示，各政党正借助TikTok展开一场表演性竞争，比拼谁能最有效地吸引年轻受众，却未必涉及实质性的政治议题论述。本研究将TikTok使用量激增的现象，置于更广层面围绕社交媒体监管与年轻人政治幻灭感展开的政治辩论语境中，并呼吁制定相关标准，以约束并监管社交媒体竞选活动，尤其是针对年轻选民的相关竞选行为。