Securing the Youth Vote: A Comparative Analysis of Digital Persuasion on TikTok Among Political Actors

In the context of "pop politics" and "politainment," the irruption of TikTok has changed the landscape of social media and become the fastest-growing application among young people. Based on the peculiarities of the social platform's affordances and the political personalization approach, we explore the differences between political parties and political leaders in terms of digital persuasion on TikTok in Spain and Poland. This work contributes to the scarce knowledge about the strategic use of TikTok for political purposes. It also attempts to fill the gap in the comparative research into the practical uses of TikTok in different political contexts. The study explores the three classical persuasion appeals - pathos, ethos, and logos - based on a visual, quantitative analysis of N = 372 videos posted on the official TikTok profiles of the main political parties and leaders from January 1st to March 31st, 2022. Differences were found in how political parties and political leaders used TikTok's affordances as well as in the main rhetorical resource they use to persuade. We noted the use of more rational resources (logos) in the case of political parties and more emotional resources (pathos) for political leaders. Further, the rare presence of the personality in the videos of the political actors (ethos), along with their unusual privatization role, indicate that personalization on TikTok is far from being considered as part of their digital persuasion strategy

Smartphones: reading habits and overuse. A qualitative study in Denmark, Lithuania and Spain

Recently, the smartphone has become the key device in families andworkplaces, changing people’s habits and ways of interaction in our liquidand hyperconnected societies. Little research has been done on the useof smartphones for reading, since the telephone was not associated withreading until very recently. This paper presents an overview of digital mobilereading in the digital literacy context and tries to answer different researchquestions, such as: how do people read on the smartphone? Do people havean addiction to/misuse of mobiles? Its objective is to offer empirical dataabout people’s experiences of digital mobile reading and to analyse how wedepend on our smartphone through a small-scale qualitative study includingdifferent informants from three European capital cities: Copenhagen(Denmark), Madrid (Spain) and Vilnius (Lithuania).The paper does not aim to generalise its findings, but to advance the field of digital literacy research, a field in which the meaning (the interviews) has been interpreted in relation to a wider socio-cultural context.The results report that the “context”, the “time” and the “situation” wherereading is carried out are decisive for understanding; furthermore, the typeof navigation that readers can perform on the smartphone has importantconsequences in the reading process, hence, the layout must be well designedfor active and attentive users on mobile devices. Our Informants assert thatsituations like boredom, waiting or loneliness can induce the use of thesmartphone. Therefore, more research is needed, in different areas and withnew digital literacy programmes in order to help young people (and adults)use their mobiles as advantageously as possible

Phone Use, Offline Neglect, and Reachability: A Qualitative Study in Denmark, Lithuania, and Spain

The use of smart technology (ST) has dramatically increased in recent years, with smartphones and tablets affording use in all locations and for innumerable purposes. Consequently, we relate differently to our surroundings – a condition we refer to as 'offline neglect'. This paper reports the results of a qualitative, small-scale project investigating how informants from three European capital cities, Vilnius, Lithuania, Madrid, Spain, and Copenhagen, Denmark, perceive the changes associated with ST-induced offline neglect in the daily navigation of their physical and social environments. Our informants were generally quite verbose about the unwanted side effects of excessive phone use, especially on social relations. Nevertheless, most informants reported experiencing trouble with limiting their ST use although they did point to avoidance strategies. Based on our data, we introduce and discuss the concept of 'reachability' as crucial to understanding the effects of ST use on the social environment

Social Networking Websites in Electoral Campaigns: the Case of Lithuania

In recent years social networking websites, and especially Facebook, have attracted millions of new users. For that reason, politicians seek to use this interactive space more and more intensively for their goals, most often during the period of election campaigns. This article analyzes the processes of political communication via social networking sites, and discusses the benefits and some negative aspects of these communicational activities. As well, the article presents the analysis of the use of social networking websites during the presidential campaign of 2009 in the Republic of Lithuania. It also presents the results of the municipal councils election campaign of 2011, which reveal various aspects of the use of social networking websites by the candidates. Finally, the article presents the results of the logistic regression model, which allows forecasting the use of social networking websites by politicians during elections