TikTok is emerging as the new electoral battleground in the 2024 general elections as Indonesian politicians scramble to get the votes of members of Generation Z, many of whom will be first-time voters and big fans of China’s widely popular video-hosting service.    

With 113 million users, TikTok is now the third-most popular content-sharing platform in Indonesia, behind Google’s YouTube and Meta’s Facebook. This makes the country home to the platform’s second-largest audience globally after the United States, accounting for more than half of its total audience in Southeast Asia.  

While so-called Gen Zers are seen as being politically apathetic, and while TikTok is far less polarized than Twitter or Facebook, electoral contenders are now turning to the new platform to tip the balance of electoral power in their favor. TikTok users, a majority of whom are aged between 18 and 24, form a major voting bloc.

The election has thus slightly changed the TikTok experience for its users. 

“I see a lot of content about Ganjar,” 19-year-old Raffa Ararya from South Jakarta, told The Jakarta Post on Thursday, referring to the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle’s (PDI-P) presumptive presidential candidate Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo. “Other than that, it’s the jingle from PAN,” he added, referring to the National Mandate Party’s recent party jingle, which has made the rounds across Indonesian social media platforms.

While Raffa does not regard TikTok as a reliable source of information on politicians and political parties, he said the platform had sparked discussions surrounding next year’s elections among his peers.

‘Increasingly competitive’

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