TikTok data shows gender divide in political videos

When we asked our followers to send us their TikTok viewing histories, we found distinct differences in political news shown to men and women.

A significant gender gap has emerged in this year’s presidential campaign, with women voters breaking for Vice President Kamala Harris and men for former president Donald Trump. For participants in a unique Washington Post experiment, that gap has also shown up in their TikTok feeds.

This fall, more than 800 American adults shared their TikTok viewing histories with The Post, opening a rare window on how the increasingly popular app presents political news. The Post found that female users received roughly 11 percent more content about Harris than men did, while men — even liberal ones — were more likely to be shown videos about Trump than women were.

The 800 users who responded to The Post overwhelmingly identified as liberal. But the gender gap also showed up in a Post analysis of 300 TikTok users whose histories were collected in a parallel effort by researchers at Cybersecurity for Democracy, a nonpartisan multi-university project that studies algorithms. In that dataset — where liberals, conservatives and moderates were evenly divided — men were 12.5 percent more likely than women to see videos about Trump.

The upcoming presidential election was by far the dominant political topic in users’ feeds. But men and women saw different topics: Men appeared to be following the war in Ukraine more closely than women; they also saw far more content than women about taxes and inflation.

Women were more likely to see videos about reproductive rights and health care. They also were almost twice as likely as men to see a 2016 video of Trump running mate JD Vance saying “I’m a Never-Trump guy, I never liked him” — remixed by TikTok user @casadimusic to the 2003 hip-hop hit “Freek-a-Leek.”

Caption from article by Jeremy B. Merrill, Cristiano Lima-Strong and Caitlin Gilbert.

[melonsoepic]

“No that’s not me in the video” is exactly what JD Vance would say…

[TKF-]

Honestly less surprised to hear this JD Vance talking about the gender gap than normal JD

[iamtwatson]

This resonates with why I quit Tik Tok a long time ago, getting pigeon holed into one specific echo chamber

[myrrical]

I experience this on Instagram too! I’m a guy, but I get a lot of Kamala videos and for a while now I’ve noticed I often get a lot of videos, unrelated to politics, that are also targeted to woman (e.g., a lot of skincare, makeup, or nail-care product recommendations). I always found it strange bc I would think “these video’s don’t seem like they’re for me.”

I guessing now though that i wound up in a different “bucket” by the algorithm bc of my political views

[shawnhalls]

If I had TikTok data to send, I would have. The idea of companies being forced to "give you your data upon request" but you have to send it to a journalist to figure out what is in it. Fascinating. Please continue this work, please continue to help the public understand what the algorithms are actually doing. We can't hold companies accountable through this much obfuscation or believe claims of impropriety unless people know. Cheers

[BroudbrunMusicMerge]

I appreciate that this video didn't try to establish causality rather than just stating the correlation

[MJB]

For some reason I keep getting recommended videos of JD Vance working a side gig at a news publisher

[Smollchanel]

As a guy who supports Harris, I never thought about how little I see of Kamala and how much I see trump

[RockstarRaccn]

This is one of the known problems with algorithms, and one of the reasons I tell people to support projects like the Fediverse (Mastodon). We need to get the flow of ideas out of the hands of these companies.

[hammburgerman]

I’ve seen one politician (on instagram I don’t have tiktok) and it was RFK Jr. death gripping a cricket he found in his living room and talking about it

[TheBluetwo]

As a man, I don't get JD Vance or Trump videos because I just block those accounts when they come up. The best content filter is the one you maintain, not the algorithm. I don't have toxicity in my feed because I shut that shit down as soon as it rears its head. This works on Twitter, Tiktok, YouTube, IG.... Literally just use the tools at your disposal and you won't get mad at the algorithm.

[wilsontheknight]

I will never vote for Donald trump and have always voted democrat yet I still get videos of trump and far right accounts. I barely ever see Kamala on my feed

[aaritmitra]

I can't wait for election season to be over so that I don't have to see those stupid ads

[SailorAnthy]

I’m not on tiktok but yes, this matches my feed and it’s wild. Thank you for this, I’ve been saying it awhile and feeling like I was crazy

[milesroy]

1000% accurate. The algorithm apparently thinks I’ll love content from misogynists

[artemis]

Woman here! I immediately sang the ‘I’ve a never trump guy’ before the clip played. Such a jam

[odinwarlock]

Not that i use tick tock but i usually see Kamala's posts over Trumps

[hunterbihn]

So wait … men saw Trump 100% more and women saw Harris 40% more. I have noticed that as a man I am constantly pushed conservative influencers and I think the tech algorithms are pushing conservative views overall

[Deathnom]

Gotta love how market manipulation tactics are allowed for politics

[boredmarshmallo]

One of the major platforms should add a "switch algorithm" function so people can see outside the echo chambers we're being trapped in