A young woman with enviable dark eyelashes looks directly into the camera, holds a pink eyelash curler and offers her viewers a makeup tutorial.
“Hey guys, I’m going to teach you how to have long eyelashes,” says Feroza Aziz.
But the TikTok video includes a twist.
“So the first thing you need to do is take your eyelash curler, curl your eyelashes, obviously. Then you’re going to put it down and use whatever phone you’re using right now to look up what’s going on in China “, explains Aziz. “They set up concentration camps and throw innocent Muslims there.”
Aziz, 19, refers to reported Internment of Uighur Muslims in China. The video summarizes some of China’s alleged human rights violations against Uyghurs, and Aziz asks his viewers to raise awareness about the issue.
WATCH | Some TikTok influencers introduce political content into their posts:
CBC’s Anya Zoledziowski shows how activists are using trends, like the Get Ready With Me (GRWM) video, and other creative techniques to circumvent social media censors who they say are limiting the reach of their messages.
She disguised her activism in a makeup tutorial in order to attract viewers. And it worked: in two years, the video has accumulated more than three million views on TikTok. (CBC News previously reported that the platform temporarily removed the video for political reasons, but eventually reinstated it.)
Aziz’s reel also circulated on other platforms, including X.
Aziz isn’t the only social media influencer leveraging trending hashtags and video formats on social media platforms to discuss otherwise serious issues like war, LGBTQ rights, and access to music. ‘abortion. In fact, it’s become a popular strategy to get people to watch political content they wouldn’t otherwise see.
Bait and switch
In another TikTok example, Emira D’Spain, the first black transgender woman to walk in a Victoria’s Secret fashion show, looks at the camera and says, “I’m filming a ‘Get Ready With Me,’ but I also want to tell you about a very important charity that I work with for Pride.”
D’Spain then explains that she is raising funds for the Marsha P. Johnson Institutea black trans advocacy group, and tells viewers how they can get involved.
Brianna Wiens, an English professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario who studies online activism, says this bait-and-switch technique involves “using what’s already popular, then using that popularity to redirect (attention).”
Valeria Shashenok, a 22-year-old woman living in Ukraine, makes “Day in the Life” Reels – a popular trend that takes viewers through a content creator’s typical day – to share tongue-in-cheek content about war .
“This is the smartest way to disseminate information,” she said over Zoom from the city of Chernihiv.
Capitalize on trends
Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Shashenok posted a TikTok Reel with the caption: “My typical day in a bomb shelter.” In it, viewers learn about Shashenok’s parents and dog in their bunker, as well as the wreckage above ground.
It has been viewed 51.8 million times.
“I like videos… like ‘my daily routine in Mariupol now that it’s occupied,’” Shachenok said, referring to the Russian-occupied Ukrainian coastal city. “It’s so interesting.”
A similar vlog published by creator @anat.international and viewed nearly 400,000 times presents daily life in Gaza.
“Unfortunately, it’s not a very pretty and relaxing day in the life of an influencer,” the narrator says.
Politically motivated influencers have also incorporated their activism into viral content on the topic. Barbie movie as well as trendy dances And recipes.
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Bypass restrictions
Sometimes influencers need to present their content in creative ways in order to get around the restrictions set by different social media platforms.
TikTok and Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram) ban content considered inappropriate, including sexually explicit content and graphic images. This can make it difficult to publish articles on difficult topics such as abortion and war.
Several human rights groups have Also warned that Meta has stifled pro-Palestinian content since the outbreak of the Gaza war in October. CBC News also uncovered isolated incidents of Israelis alleging the platforms had silenced them.
“There is no truth to the suggestion that we are deliberately suppressing votes,” a Meta spokesperson said in an email to CBC News.
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Joey Siu, a Hong Kong pro-democracy activist currently living in exile in the United States, says she and her colleagues stay away from TikTok because they believe the Beijing-owned company restricts critical posts towards the Chinese government.
Both platforms told CBC News that their guidelines are intended to keep users safe and that they do not arbitrarily block content. Meta and TikTok have also linked their respective community guidelines.
“Our principles center on balancing expression and preventing harm, respecting human dignity, and ensuring our actions are fair,” says the TikTok author. community guidelines site.
Some activists claim that some of their content has been “shadowbanned,” or put into a sort of invisible mode where only they, and not their audience, can see the content they post.
“A frightening effect”
Creators need to be strategic so they can get their content in front of as many viewers as possible, said Deja Foxx, an Arizona-based digital strategist who worked on U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’s 2020 Democratic nomination campaign. .
Foxx, who posts a lot of content about reproductive justice, says she believes users who disagree with her posts took advantage of TikTok’s algorithm to flag her content.
She said shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling on abortion in June 2022: “I’ve been getting all these complaints from the TikTok app, flagging my videos for things like grooming, for things like selling illegal goods – whereas the content I had created was about reproductive care.
She said “it really had a chilling effect on what I was able to do and create and share at a time when people needed this information more than ever.”
That hasn’t stopped him and other influencers from getting creative to circumvent censorship, real or perceived. Foxx says she will use a zero and an exclamation point to replace the letters “o” and “i” in her TikTok Reels. (Think “ab0rt!on” instead of “abortion.”)
The goal is to go under the radar of the algorithm.
Duets and hashbaiting
Wiens has found other tactics that allow influencers to continue producing this content, including “duets.”
In a duo, a content creator splits the screen so that two videos play simultaneously. In the political version of this trend, one clip is uncontroversial — hands baking a cake, for example — while the other might be a rant about current events or a human rights crisis.
Then there’s so-called “hashbaiting,” in which creators post political content with unrelated but trending hashtags (e.g. #taylorswift and #GRWM) to confuse the algorithm and get their posts in front of more people. of viewers.
Wiens says these tactics seem to work to bring political issues to the forefront on social media.
According to Reach3, a market research consultancy, 77% of TikTok users say the platform helps them stay informed about politics and social justice. THE same report found that more than a quarter of TikTok users have attended a Black Lives Matter rally in person, compared to just 13% of non-users.
Online activism is “part of the type of protest rhetoric we see in protest action — social media is a key way to learn about it,” said Wiens, who admitted she enjoys herself a lot this sneaky content.
She said her favorite trend on social media is the “youth aesthetic.”
“They’re attracting people to their TikToks by saying, ‘Let’s talk about bare face trend‘, then say, ‘Now that I have your attention, we riot at midnight.'”
