TikTokTrends Week: 15 – Election Edition
November 2nd - November 9th
Hi!
This week I am a day late. I will continue to send out my newsletter every Sunday!
Last week, we had the 2020 Presidential Election, and on Election Day, together with First Draft and ProPublica’s ElectionLand, I was working on finding and verifying misinformation on various social media platforms. It was one hell of an Election Day and it has been even more of a thrilling election week. After several news outlets reported that Biden had won in Pennsylvania, on Saturday, Biden gave his victory speech together with Kamala Harris!
This week, I’ll be focusing less on trends and more on misinformation. I will give prime examples of misinformation that is spreading on TikTok, and fact-check these claims.
Instead of hashtags, I will focus on general topics of the misinformation since the obvious hashtag for all of these is #Election2020.
Let’s start!
Poll watchers
This was a huge topic on Election Day, where a number of reports stated that poll watchers were not allowed into polling stations. This video below, taken in Philadelphia, was especially trending on numerous platforms.
The video above was first shared on Twitter by Will Chamberlain and was viewed over 3.5 million times. The video shows a poll worker, Gary Feldman, a republican activist, and a poll watcher, trying to enter the poll station by showing his Poll Watchers Certificate. In the video, he is seen being denied entry and asked by poll workers to call the police to handle the situation. According to the reporting done by ProPublica, Feldman was later allowed into the polling station after the mistake was corrected, which is the most crucial part of the story that is conveniently skipped when talking about the issue. However, the video is still being used as evidence of voter fraud. Trump continues to say that poll watchers were not allowed to monitor the counting of votes.
An incident that happened in Detroit also gained a lot of traction online. Poll watchers were not let in because the polling station was filled to capacity. This caused a group of people to start recording the counting of the ballots from the windows and doors of the polling station, which made poll workers intimidated. This lead to officials putting paper on the windows to stop the people outside from interrupting the counting. This, of course, led to more chaos. However, what is frequently missed in this case is that poll watchers from both parties were not let in, due to the size of the polling station. The Detroit Free Press reported that both Democratic and Republican watchers were told to stay outside after the polling station was filled.
Misleading videos like these intentionally leave crucial details out and instead focus on the details that would get the most attention. The issue with the poll worker above was resolved in 20 minutes, according to reports. If the person is genuinely concerned about voter fraud, why not stay there a little longer, post a follow-up video on what happened after?
These videos are meant to push a narrative, not to showcase the truth.
Ballot Boxes
Ballots illegally brought to polling locations in coolers, suitcases, and unmarked boxes in wagons at 4 am quickly became popular on various social media platforms with people posting images and videos of suitcases being carried into polling stations. These are obviously not true. The wagon story was quickly debunked when journalist, Brett Kast, posted a picture of the same wagon with camera equipment being carried in it. The men walking with suitcases were also debunked. NHK, Japan’s public Broadcaster, confirmed that the men in suitcases were their own correspondents.
The video above, posted by Gadi Schwartz, NBC News correspondent, is a live fact-check of what is happening. He first films Trump supporters yelling, accusing people of bringing in ballots with their suitcases. Schwartz then moves to the other side of the fence, showing us the camera equipment journalists carry with them in black boxes.
The video has gotten over three million views and is a great example of how journalism can be done on TikTok. The concept was simple but effective. Schwartz is also known for the journalistic work he does on Snapchat.
Counting the Vote
This was also a big issue on Election Day. Many people created videos explaining a glitch in the system, which was claimed to change 6,000 Trump votes to Biden votes. The claim continues by explaining that the glitch was fixed, and the changed votes were turned back. This conspiracy plays into the larger theme of voter fraud that Trump and the Republicans have been pushing months prior and on Election Day.
The video above was watched over 100 thousand times and is just one of the many videos that were created on this issue. Posted by TheConservativeLatino83, he talks about an incident that happened in Michigan, Antrim County, where a technical issue created an error in the tabulation of the votes. The issue reached a large amount of Trump supporters, when Trump tweeted an article from Breitbart, a right-wing propaganda website.
The explanation of the events that occurred in Antrim County can be found on the Michigan.gov website. There, it is explained that the issue was not a glitch; rather, it was a human error. The Antrim County clerk forgot to update the software, which led to a malfunction in the tabulation of the ballots. Although I do agree that this is a very critical error at a time like this, spreading baseless conspiracy theories is not the right way to fix it.
It was reported by Gizmodo that the error was not noticed due to the history of the county’s political leaning, as the content creator explains, rather due to the safeguards that had been put in place for these kinds of situations. The statement from the Michigan Department of State also debunked the theory that all the ballots we recounted individually to fix the error. The State Department explained that the county reviewed the tabulated ballots from each precinct to check the validity of the numbers.
Claims like these can be found all over TikTok. A right-wing content creator, Victor Nieves, also posted a video on the same topic. He explains that votes were switched automatically by a software called Dominion and that the same software is used in 30 states, some of them being key swing states in this election. This is also not true. Yes, a software called Dominion exists; however, there was no glitch that changed the ballots. The error was also quickly noticed due to safeguards in place and was fixed without posting the wrong numbers.
Donald Trump for the win!
Although Biden has been projected to win the 2020 Presidential Election by all major news outlets, many Trump supporters, including Trump himself, have yet to concede. Trump is expected to file multiple voter fraud lawsuits in key states such as Pennsylvania and Michigan, however, experts believe that these lawsuits will not change the outcome of the election.
On TikTok, Trump supporters are still waiting for the lawsuits to be filed, saying that the election was rigged. The video above was posted by Kevin Clark. He starts off by stating why he thinks Trump will win. He shows New York State as his key explanation for a Trump victory, saying that Trump has gotten more votes in New York State than most republicans he knows of. Well, that is inaccurate; New York State has been a blue state for some time now. Since 1984, the majority of New York State voters have voted for the Democratic Party. In 1984, over 3.5 million people voted for the Republican candidate, Ronald Regan. In 1988, over 3 million residents voted for the Republican candidate. In 2004, 2.9 million voters voted for George W. Bush. In recent years, New York State has seen a fair number of people voting for the republican side. These numbers are close to what Trump is predicted to receive in his 2020 election and what he got in 2016.
Clark then continues to spread misinformation, accusing democrats of casting fraudulent mail-in ballots due to the high number of ballots for Biden, which was expected since Democrats overwhelmingly opted to use the mail-in ballot system due to Covid-19 concerns.
Clark is not the only content creator focusing on the numbers in this election. SiletxNinja7, also brought up how blue states were not actually that blue. He posted a video, zooming into states that have voted Democrat and commented on how the suburban republican votes, saying that the big cities are leaving the rest of the state voiceless. However, that is not true; urban voters don’t have more power over suburban voters. It’s a matter of the popular vote. Cities have more people living in them; they tend to favor democrat. That leads to a democrat-leaning state. Suburban cities, on the other hand, have fewer people living in them. All the red space that is seen in election maps, is not an accurate representation of how many people actually voted in each county. This map created by the New York Times shows the difference in the size of the lead each candidate has in each county. This shows how counties voted much more accurately.
This video was watched over 600 thousand times and the comments seem to agree with the content creator. The creator goes as far as requesting the reallocation of the electoral college votes states have by dividing the votes so that cities can be separated from the rest of the state.
Reacting to the Election
Since TikTok is known for its reaction videos, of course, the election prompted many content creators to post their own reactions and the reactions of their families. The video below shows a family in their car, seemingly leaving the voting station when the mother learns that her son did not vote for Biden.
The video, posted by Kennedy Amaré, has been viewed over 2 million times. It starts with the mother, who is seen driving the car, yelling at her son in the back seat, “I told you to do Biden! Now we lost a vote!” while her daughter in the passenger seat is laughing. The family later posted a second video saying that she did not kill her son, and it was all OK with the brother hugging his mother.
Of course, all the reactions were not as aggressive as this one was. There are thousands of videos of Biden supporters dancing in the street. This video is from San Francisco, where you can see a large group of people celebrating Biden’s victory. This video was taken in front of the White House and people can be seen dancing to YMCA, a song that recently went viral because Trump was dancing to it. And finally, here is a video of people dancing in the streets of NYC!
I feel it is important to say, although there is little to no social distancing in any of these videos, almost all the people in the videos are wearing some sort of mask and it has been proven that wearing a mask is very effective when everyone does it.
Let’s not forget that we are still in a pandemic and we still have to stay safe, maintain social distance, and wear a mask!
We Just Got a Letter!
This is the last video of the week, I wanted to end on a funny note.
The video above was watched over 8.5 million times and has gained over 2 million likes. The clip was posted by a content creator that goes by Colbystired. It is captioned with “Nevada poll workers opening each ballot” and it aims to make fun of how long it took to open all the ballots in Nevada.
The video is originally from a children’s show called Blue’s Clues, which was one of my favorite T.V. shows as a child. In the clip, Steve Burns is opening a fan letter, singing a cute song “We just got a letter!”
That is all for this week! Please share this newsletter if you enjoyed reading it. And don’t be shy to send me an email about what you think I should cover, or if I have missed anything.
Thank you for reading, hope to see you next week, on Sunday!