Political TikTokers: Irish Parties’ Digital Media Practices on TikTok

This project contains the full text of my Master’s thesis (Academic Year 2021–2022) in Sociology and Social Research, which investigates how political parties integrate TikTok into their digital communication strategies, using the Irish party system as a case study. The study adopts a mixed-method research design to explore political actors’ digital media practices from both the producers’ and the audiences’ perspectives. The qualitative component consists of semi-structured interviews with party communication staff, aimed at reconstructing parties’ strategic intentions, perceptions, and challenges related to TikTok adoption. These interviews were analysed through thematic coding, allowing the identification of recurrent strategic patterns and meanings attributed to the platform. The quantitative component is based on a systematic content analysis of TikTok posts published by Irish political parties, focusing on message characteristics, platform features, and political framing. Engagement metrics (likes, comments, shares) are used as proxies to assess audience responses and to examine discrepancies between communicative intentions and actual performance on the platform. The research is theoretically grounded in media practice theory, the social media paradox, and the digital architectures paradigm, providing an integrated framework for studying political communication on platform-based environments. While the empirical data reflects the 2021–2022 period, the methodological design and theoretical approach remain applicable to contemporary research on platform politics, short-video platforms, and political communication in algorithmic media systems.