TikTok and the new language of political communication

Introduction: Political parties struggle to reconnect Young people by using social networks. Acknowledging that 2020 has been the year of TikTok, most Spanish political have joined this network: Podemos, with 191.400 followers and 3.1 million likes, is followed party on platform. Method: Using multimodal content analysis, paper aims at analyzing how network, for which purposes, placing attention Podemos adapted TikTok specificities in terms both language technical affordances. Results: Results show while perfectly adapts TikTok’s specific affordances (special effects, etc.), instead focusing entertainment, platform’s main genre, it uses as a showcase activities, failing favoring renovating relationship users. However, politics represented through “game frame”, say, dramatized battlefield between Good Evil, strengthens populist dichotomous vision world, endorsing emotional response. Conclusion: In sense, possible conclude that, although mainly displays content, falls into category politainment. Considering present trends usage rates suggest short-video format future media, we might expect an increase politainmement content.