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TikTok isn’t waiting for progressive politicians to catch up – Step up now

  • Mar 16
  • 6 min read

Updated: Mar 23

Raul Jurca is a political communications strategist working in the European Parliament, focusing on digital strategy and platform-driven campaigning. He built Romania’s largest political TikTok account and the third-largest political TikTok presence in the European Parliament, while closely analysing how TikTok shapes political visibility, including during Romania’s recent presidential elections. He warns that progressive political actors dismissing TikTok is a dangerous mistake that amounts to leaving the playing field wide open to be dominated by political opponents. 


I’m always hearing people say: “only young people are on TikTok.” The problem with this framing is that it reduces a major shift in political power to a demographic sidenote, as if we were talking about music preferences rather than the way visibility is being redistributed across Europe right now. What is happening on TikTok is not a youth trend, it is a shift in who gets seen, who gets heard, and who shows up in people’s daily scroll. 


Yet some politicians are still debating whether the platform deserves a real budget or serious attention. TikTok has become part of how influence works, shaping which narratives circulate, which emotions stick, and which political actors become familiar in the minds of millions. Treating it as a side experiment is what political actors do when they are uncomfortable entering a space they cannot control.



Political actors love labels because labels make things easier. Instagram becomes lifestyle. LinkedIn becomes professional. Facebook becomes legacy. TikTok becomes entertainment. Once that box is drawn, the consequences follow almost automatically: smaller budgets, junior ownership, scattered strategy, and low expectations dressed up as realism. If a platform is categorized as light, it will receive lightweight treatment. And while some are still discussing whether it is dignified to “dance” on camera, others are building serious networks, testing formats, refining tone, and investing with the understanding that attention is not decoration, it is currency in modern politics.


An equalizing force


Engagement on TikTok does not randomly reward whoever deserves it most. It rewards those who understand how the platform works. Content that leans into conflict travels faster than neutral institutional messaging. Influencer-style and activist-style accounts regularly outperform traditional political profiles because they know how to hold attention, how to frame a message, and how to keep people watching long enough for the algorithm to amplify it. Titles and mandates matter in parliamentary corridors, but on TikTok they mean very little unless they are translated into content that actually works inside the feed. The platform does not distribute reach according to hierarchy; it distributes it according to performance.


Without community, virality fades as quickly as it appears.

And yet, scroll through many political accounts and what you see looks like a press office that has discovered vertical video and stopped there. Speeches are clipped, press releases are reformatted, announcements are uploaded with the faint hope that changing the format will compensate for the absence of strategy. The account exists, technically speaking, but it rarely feels alive. Durable attention on TikTok grows through repetition, recognizable series, real conversation in the comments, and a clear emotional thread that goes beyond isolated posts. Trends may bring temporary visibility, but community is what builds influence, and without that community, virality fades as quickly as it appears.


Within the European context, where trust is already fractured and audiences cluster around identity-based and issue-based narratives, TikTok accelerates the creation of overlapping micro-publics strengthened by algorithmic feedback. These spaces grow quickly, and they grow around whoever understands how to activate them with consistency and confidence. The far right has understood this for years. They invest in creator networks, they experiment constantly, and they treat the platform as political territory. Meanwhile, some democratic actors still approach it as a box to tick, as if symbolic presence could replace serious engagement.


Double standards


The argument that avoiding TikTok somehow preserves moral clarity surfaces frequently, especially when geopolitical concerns are raised, and every time I hear it, I cannot help but notice the strategic inconsistency. Refusing to operate on a platform where political narratives are already being shaped does not weaken its influence; it simply leaves the space to those who are more than willing to dominate it. 


Stepping back does not freeze the battlefield. It simply hands it over.

No one seriously argues that politicians should abandon Facebook, even though we all know how curated and controlled that algorithm is. No one calls for a mass exit from X, even though it is openly steered by its owner and has normalized some of the most toxic content online. Yet when it comes to TikTok, we suddenly discover moral restraint. The conclusion seems to be that we should walk away from the platform where younger generations spend a significant part of their online lives, where political discourse is accelerating, and where, in countries like Romania, almost everyone is present. Meanwhile, other political actors are already light years ahead, investing, experimenting, and building disciplined communities. Stepping back does not freeze the battlefield. It simply hands it over.


A self-fulfilling prophecy


At the same time, traditional digital advertising faces tighter regulation, rising costs, and declining organic reach across Meta platforms. Parties and NGOs feel the pressure and move toward TikTok in response, sometimes reluctantly, often without preparation. But presence without structure produces scattered messaging, inconsistent tone, and frustration when results do not come immediately. That frustration then reinforces the original misclassification, feeding the idea that the platform was never serious in the first place. It becomes a loop of underinvestment and underperformance.



Recent electoral cycles, including Romania in 2024, showed how quickly visibility can shift in digital ecosystems when amplification meets low preparedness. TikTok shapes agenda-setting, candidate perception, emotional association, and issue visibility in societies already marked by fragile trust. Institutional legitimacy still matters, but attention increasingly follows behavior rather than status.


For segments of the electorate who live inside the feed, absence means invisibility.

Strategic engagement requires senior ownership, narrative clarity, sustained investment, and an understanding that engagement is not vanity but distribution fuel. When TikTok sits at the margins of an organization, its results reflect that marginal position. When it is integrated into the core communication strategy, it becomes leverage. The way political actors categorize TikTok internally determines how seriously they compete on it, and that decision ultimately shapes whether they influence the digital arena or simply watch it reshape politics from a distance.


Look before you leap


There is no single list of “successful progressive TikTok politicians” that can be universally replicated. TikTok ecosystems are highly contextual: language, national debates, political culture, and audience habits shape what works and what does not. What resonates in Germany may look very different in Spain, Romania, or the United States. For that reason, progressive campaign teams would benefit from conducting their own “platform reconnaissance”: identifying accounts in their country or political ecosystem that are already building audiences and studying how they structure their content, interact with viewers, and develop recognizable formats. These examples are not difficult to find. A quick search on TikTok itself, Google, or even AI tools will quickly reveal which political actors or creators are shaping conversations in a given language space.


What matters more than copying specific accounts is understanding the structural lessons that emerge from them. For progressive political actors, five practical steps follow:


• Treat TikTok as infrastructure, not as an experiment. Assign senior responsibility, dedicate real resources, and integrate the platform into the core communication strategy rather than leaving it as a peripheral project.


• Build recognizable formats instead of posting isolated videos. Successful accounts rely on recurring series, consistent storytelling styles, and identifiable voices that become familiar to audiences.


• Invest in community, not just reach. Replying to comments, interacting with viewers, and sustaining dialogue are essential to building the trust that turns attention into influence.


• Work with creators who already speak the platform’s language. Collaboration with activists, educators, and content creators can help political ideas travel beyond institutional audiences.


• Think in terms of narrative presence, not just campaign messaging. TikTok rewards continuous cultural visibility. Political actors who appear only during election cycles are competing against communities that have been building attention for years.


Ultimately, the most important shift is conceptual. TikTok should not be approached as a place to occasionally upload political messages, but as an environment where political identity, narrative familiarity, and community relationships are built over time.

For more insights from Raul on getting the most out of TikTok, join our upcoming webinar "Beyond entertainment: The 3-phase blueprint for political impact on TikTok" on April 15.


Further reading recommended by the author: 


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