Repurposing Content: A Real Political Weapon on TikTok

As part of the presidential campaign, Predicta Lab set up an observatory to monitor conspiracy theories on social media. Baptiste Robert, founder of Predicta Lab, presents the results every Friday at 5 p.m. on the Anti-complot show on LCI. This article takes a closer look at some of the results discussed during the February 4 broadcast.

Our observatory allows us to analyze content posted on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google News, and TikTok, and today we will once again focus on the latter.

Among the most popular TikTok videos posted between January 27 and February 3, several pieces of content have been repurposed to convey political messages. For example, one video (Figure 1) shows a clip from the Looney Tunes cartoon Duck Dodgers in the 24th 1/2 Century, in which Duck Dodgers' face is replaced by Emmanuel Macron's and Marvin the Martian's by Vladimir Putin's. This video might seem like simple, harmless humor, given that its original creator (@IllumiReptilien on Twitter) is known for this type of parody. On TikTok, however, it was shared by a Rassemblement National candidate, which helped it reach 44,500 views within a week and up to 1.7 million views to date. This large audience witnessed its discrediting effect on the outgoing president, particularly in light of the tensions in Ukraine. In this way, the pro-Rassemblement National TikToker conveys an extremely explicit political message: Emmanuel Macron is not firm enough to handle his diplomatic responsibilities.

Figure 1: TikTok repurposing a Looney Tunes episode

Similarly, a TikTok video zooming in on a photo of Adolf Hitler in a history book (Figure 2) claims to recognize candidate Éric Zemmour among his supporters. The photo is from 1932, not 1939 — two dates at which Zemmour wasn't even born yet anyway. Here, an account that presents itself as historical distorts a historical fact for defamatory purposes against one of the presidential candidates. This video was also among the most popular of the week, with more than 16,000 views in a single week.

Figure 2: TikTok repurposing a photo of Adolf Hitler

Finally, the TikTok from @alauxm34 (Figure 3) takes this repurposing even further with a clip from the final episode of the series L'Effondrement, taken out of context to change its message. In this clip, which has since been removed from TikTok (likely for copyright reasons), we hear someone lashing out on a television set at the people he is talking to, accusing them of irresponsibility. The subject is not specified, but the protagonist conveys the urgency and gravity of the situation in an extremely anxiety-inducing atmosphere, reinforced by the banners framing the footage. The series originally deals with environmental concerns, but the hashtags #DictatureSanitaire and #Résistance attached to the video redirect this alarmist message toward the government and its handling of the health crisis. Here again, the content's message is manipulated to communicate a new political message of the author's choosing.

Figure 3: TikTok repurposing a clip from the series L'Effondrement

This rebranding of the series is the work of a member of the far-right group "Les Frères Dissidents," as indicated by the hashtag #freredissidents and the logo at the bottom of the video. This group is highly critical of France's handling of the health crisis: their website calls the health pass "an outrage" and shares the list of MPs who voted in its favor, along with their email addresses, and an invitation to "send them a kind message" (Figure 4).

Figure 4: Website of Les Frères Dissidents

Social media is full of such examples of repurposed content, whether for political purposes or purely for humor, though the latter often carries a committed message as well. This phenomenon reflects the emergence of a new form of political expression, in which messages are disguised and their originators can be difficult to identify. Their impact should not be underestimated, however, since social media acts as an echo chamber that amplifies the reach of these messages and speeds up their spread.

A majority of young people, still in the process of forming their view of the world and of politics, are exposed to this kind of political expression through repurposed content on TikTok. This can be problematic, as these messages present sharply polarized, binary representations that struggle to reflect the complexity of the societal issues at stake.

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