How race and politics interact in modern South Africa – The Economist Achi-News

A young woman with excellent dark eyelashes looks straight into the camera, holds a pink lash curler and offers her viewers a make-up tutorial.

“Hi guys, I’m going to teach you how to get long eyelashes,” said Feroza Aziz.

But the TikTok video contains a plot twist.

“So the first thing you need to do is grab your lash curler, curl your lashes, obviously. Then you are going to give [it] down and use your phone that you’re using right now to search what’s going on in China,” Aziz said. “They’re having concentration camps, throwing innocent Muslims in there.”

Aziz, 19, refers to the reported burial of Uyghur Muslims in China. The video summarizes some of the alleged human rights violations that China has committed against Uyghurs, and Aziz tells his viewers to spread awareness about the issue.

WATCH | Some TikTok influencers sneak political content into their posts:

She hid her act in a make-up tutorial to attract viewers. And it worked: in two years, the video has collected more than three million views on TikTok. (Previously reported by CBS News that the platform temporarily removed the video for political reasons, but eventually restored it.)

Aziz’s reel was also distributed across other platforms, including X.

Aziz is not the only social media influencer who relies on trending hashtags and video formats across social media platforms to discuss otherwise serious issues such as war, LGBTQ rights and abortion access. In fact, it has become a popular strategy to attract people to watch political content they might not 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, stares into the camera and says, “I’m in the middle of filming ‘get ready with me,’ but I i also want to tell you about a really important charity i work with for Pride.”

D’Spain then explains that she is raising money for the Marsha P. Johnson Institutean advocacy group for Black trans people, and tells viewers how they can play a part.

Brianna Wiens, an English professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario who studies online activism, says the purpose of this bait-and-switch technique is to “use the thing that’s already popular and then use 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 walks viewers through the typical day of a content creator – to share tongue-in-cheek content about the war.

“This is the smartest way to spread information,” he 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 a caption reading, “My Typical Day in a Bomb Shelter.” In it, viewers are introduced to 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,'” Shashenok said, referring to the Russian-occupied Ukrainian coastal city. “That’s so interesting.”

A similar vlog posted by creator @anat.international and viewed nearly 400,000 times offers a day in the life of Gaza.

“Unfortunately, it’s not a very relaxing ‘day in the life’ of a pretty influencer,” the narrator said.

Politically motivated influencers have also woven their activism into viral content about the A Barbie movie as well as trending dances a recipes.

WATCH | How trans content creators are fighting back against online hate:

Avoid restrictions

At times, influencers have to creatively package their content so that it gets around the limitations imposed by the individual social media platforms.

TikTok and Meta (which owns Facebook and Instagram) ban content deemed inappropriate, including sexually explicit content and graphic images. That can make it difficult to post about difficult topics like abortion and war.

Human rights groups have multiple also warn that Meta has suppressed pro-Palestinian content since the war in Gaza began in October. CBC News also found individual incidents of Israelis claiming platforms had been silenced.

“There is no truth to the suggestion that we are deliberately suppressing voices,” a Meta spokesperson told CBC News in an email.

WATCH | Teenage fact-checkers take on fake TikTok jobs:

Joey Siu, a pro-democracy activist from Hong Kong currently living in exile in the US, says she and her colleagues are staying off TikTok because they believe the company is owned by to Beijing restricting posts critical of the Chinese government.

Both platforms told CBC News that their guidelines are meant to keep users safe – and that they don’t arbitrarily block content. Meta and TikTok also link to their respective community guidelines.

“Our principles focus on balancing expression with preventing harm, embracing human dignity and ensuring our actions are fair,” said TikTok’s community guidance site.

Some operators claim that some of their content has been “shadowed” – that is, put into a kind of invisible mode where only they, and not their audience, can see the content they’re posting. posted it.

‘Chilling effect’

Creators must be strategic so they can get in front of as many viewers as possible, said Deja Foxx, a digital strategist in Arizona who worked on U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris’ 2020 Democratic nomination campaign.

Foxx, who posts a lot of content about reproductive justice, says she believes users who disagree with her posts have taken advantage of TikTok’s algorithm to flag her content.

He said shortly after the US Supreme Court overturned the landmark abortion decision Roe v. Wade in June 2022, “I got all these complaints from TikTok the app, pointing out my videos about things like grooming, about things like selling illegal goods – when the content I had made was about care reproductive.”

He said “it really had a chilling effect on what I was able to do and create and share at a time when people needed that information more than ever.”

That hasn’t stopped her and other influencers from being creative in order to avoid censors, real or perceived. Foxx says he will use zeros and exclamation points to replace the letters “o” and “i” in his TikTok reels. (Think “ab0rt!on” instead of “abortion.”

The point is to fly under the algorithm’s radar.

Duets and ‘hashbaiting’

Wiens has found other tactics that allow influencers to continue producing this content, including “duos.”

In duo, a content creator splits the screen so that two videos play at the same time. In the political version of this trend, one clip is non-controversial – hands making a cake, for example – while the other could be a rant about current events or a human rights crisis.

Then there’s what’s known as “hashbaiting,” where creators post political content with unrelated but trending hashtags (eg #taylorswift and #GRWM) to confuse the algorithm and get their posts in front of more viewers.

Wiens says these tactics seem to work to bring political issues to the fore on social media.

According to Reach3, a market research consultancy, 77 percent of TikTok users say the platform helps them stay informed about politics and social justice. The the same report They found that more than a quarter of TikTok users had attended a Black Lives Matter rally in person, compared to just 13 percent of non-users.

Online activism is “one part of the kind of protest rhetoric that we see in the protest action — social media is a key way to learn more,” said Wiens, who admitted she enjoys a lot of this sly content. himself.

She said her favorite trend across social media is the “girl aesthetic.”

“They draw people into their TikToks by saying, ‘Let’s talk about the bare face trend,’ and then say, ‘Now that I’ve got your attention, we riot at midnight.’”

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