TikTok has become an important communication outlet for European political parties seeking to bypass established media gatekeepers. The platform has 142 million monthly users in the EU and Populist Radical Right Parties (PRRPs) have successfully taken advantage of the platform’s popularity and logics to court young voters across Europe.
Recent research has noted that PRRPs use TikTok to de-demonise, normalise their controversial images often tarnished by allegations of racism, populism, and radicalism. TikTok gives PRRPs an opportunity to lighten their image in the eyes of young audiences who may be unfamiliar with their controversial credentials. The Finns Party (Perussuomalaiset), a Finnish populist radical right party currently part of the Finnish governing coalition, provides a useful case study in this regard. The Finns Party is popular with young TikTok users. Indeed, two of the party’s youth members rose to popularity on the platform, and were elected as first timers in 2023.
My recently completed dissertation research suggests that The Finns Party has sought to come across as likeable and relatable to a broader young audience on TikTok, while retaining their credentials as an anti-elite, ‘voice of the ordinary people’, that stands for anti-immigration positions and nationalism. Through a qualitative content analysis of the 30 most popular Finns Party TikTok videos published during the 2023 elections, I identified four Finns Party strategies: portraying competence, awareness of youth culture, relatability, and representing itself as the unfairly maligned ‘underdog’.
The Finns Party’s first strategy was to persuade the audience that it is more politically competent and in touch with the interests of the people than other parties. As is to be expected from a populist party, the Finns Party often presented itself as representing the interests of 'the people' against those of elite and that it can deliver policies that will assist ordinary people. To this end, other parties were portrayed by party leader Riikka Purra as being out of touch with people's everyday concerns, for example focusing on climate change reforms while they neglect people’s access to basic services and the wellbeing of young people. MP Miko Berbom also focused on the negative impacts of climate change reforms on industry and consumers. The party’s youth organization’s chair Lauri Laitinen also appealed to the party’s competence by framing the party’s opposition to immigration as ‘offering solutions’ rather than as being driven by racism.
In addition to being in touch with the ‘people’, the Finns Party’s sought to come across as ‘in touch’ with TikTok culture and young people by posting short humorous clips, using viral audio, memes and music to entertain in a platform typical manner. The focus on entertaining content reflects the finding that European PRRPs use hedonic entertainment to appeal to TikTok audiences. The Finns Party’s entertaining content was implicitly targeted at young users. In one clip, The Finns Party’s youth member and parliamentary candidate Nanna Väätäinen lip-synced to viral audio clip of a child’s voice singing, “sometimes you have to be a little bit naughty”, referring to how her being part of The Finns Party is a subversion of the supposed social expectation to not support them. This appeal to the attractiveness of social transgression reflects the finding on that far-right influencers on YouTube seek to ‘court audiences looking for a community with a level of rebellion’. This adaptation of the party message to TikTok norms blurred the line between influencers and politicians.
The Finns Party also addressed young people directly: the party’s most followed politician Sebastian Tynkkynen frequently addressed young people in his videos, even advertising a mentoring program for prospective young activists. Tynkkynen presented himself as someone in a direct relationship with young people, praising their support of The Finns Party as brave and mocking those allegedly upset at young people’s support for The Finns Party, thus further reinforcing the youthful transgression that the audience may identify with.
The third strategy was used by MPs Miko Bergbom and Sebastian Tynkkynen, who tried to come across as relatable and close with the audience. This strategy echoes that relied upon by social media influencers, who focus on creating an authentic relationship with the audience to build a following. This was apparent in Miko Bergbom’s audiovisual performance of his melancholia and hard work against people taking down The Finns Party’s ads. His presentation of sadness and virtuous persistence, despite adversity, was enhanced by TikTok’s music feature and the behind-the-scenes nature of this display, humanising Bergbom’s election campaign.
Sebastian Tynkkynen also performed intimate emotions and built a relatable influencer persona. He emphasised his ordinariness by dressing in a casual style and continuously referring to his poor background. Additionally, he relied on parasocial dynamics: the blurring of populist style with the performed ordinariness and intimacy of the vlog is apparent in a clip Tynkkynen filmed in the parliament. He refers to himself as a poor person in the parliament of the rich and showed tearful gratitude to his audience for electing him. In this way, the populist style’s emphasis on one’s proximity to ‘the people’ was enhanced by influencer logics to portray Tynkkynen as closer to his supporters than ‘typical’ politicians.
The Finns Party’s fourth strategy was to persuade the audience that it is a democratically legitimate party, under threat, by constructing a collective victimhood identity. The party’s appeal to an underdog identity is exemplified by Miko Bergbom‘s and Joakim Vigelius’s videos, where they showed their ads destroyed by opponents—who Bergbom labelled as ‘enemies of democracy’ it. In this way, the party’s opponents were framed as law-breaking and the Finns Party as legitimate and law-abiding. The Finns Party also sought to cultivate this underdog identity by trying to come across as fighting against social odds. In one election debate video Riikka Purra portrays herself as having courage to argue against other parties’ immigration and climate change views, which Purra claims politicians only support ‘to be acceptable.’ The Finns Party’s position as the brave underdog under threat was enhanced by the video as it shows Purra being interrupted by other parties. This appeal to the virtue of the politician who dares to tell supposedly repressed truths is similar to the finding of a previous study on the British far-right influencer and YouTuber Paul Joseph Watson, who portrayed himself as a brave truth teller.
Overall, my study shows that The Finns Party has adapted its communication style to the specific needs of TikTok, with its rhetoric taking more of a populist tone of relatability—to ‘the people’ and to young people specifically—instead of unambiguously anti-immigrant nationalism, which previous research on The Finns Party has often seen as central to their messaging. This points to the Finns Party’s continuing use of double-speak, which has been applied by Tuula Vaarakallio to describe the party’s tendency to speak in a more moderate manner to a wider, public audience that may not share the party’s more radical ideas, than when the party’s core supporters communicate in private. The focus on reaching young people through light entertainment and addressing them in platforms specific to them suggests that PRRPs use of new platforms may revamp their image. Given the prevalence of influencer tactics, the entry of new, younger and more platform-savvy politicians, and the ongoing popularity of TikTok, future research should pay more attention to how politicians build parasocial relationships with their audience and how this can reshape messages and images put forward by PRR parties.
