A study by the Center for Economic Research and its Applications (Cepremap), published Tuesday, November 3, nuances TikTok’s role in high-school mobilizations and the autumn youth movement. Only 8% of the schools blocked at the start of the high-school movement had been named in a video before the first images of their blockade appeared.
The three authors, specialists in computational social sciences and political sociology, examined nearly one million public videos, totaling 16 billion views and 4.5 million comments, between September 1 and October 29.
They find that traces of coordination of the violence remain very limited. TikTok appears mainly as a space for circulating slogans and, to a lesser extent, practical information.
These results do not rule out coordination outside the field of observation, in private messaging or on other platforms, the researchers specify.
They invite questioning the relevance of a restriction whose effectiveness in preventing violence remains to be established.
Comments on videos showing violence condemn these acts nearly ten times more than they celebrate them. Explicit calls for violence represent 0.27% of comments. Images of violence account for 14% of views, and more than half come from the media. Demands (32% of views) and humor (31%) weigh more heavily.
The researchers identify two successive waves in the circulation of videos, corresponding to the main sequences of the mobilizations: high-school demonstrations, then the generalization of the youth movement, with respective peaks on October 1 and 17. The date of October 17 gained visibility as early as September 8–10, even before the first press articles.