Methodology
For researchers, TikTok is a very difficult platform to use. The app has a glitchy search functionality, and due to the volume of content uploaded to the platform every day, it does not consistently surface every video when users want to use its search feature.
For this newsletter, we are partnering with Zelf, an AI-powered social analytics platform and dashboard to search and filter content from the platform. Zelf helps us search for hundreds of search terms and hashtags about the presidential election, and we then cross-check our findings by doing key manual searches within the app. Posts that we track will mention these political search terms either via hashtag, keyword in caption, or in the audio of the video.
TikTok is also a platform that moves content very quickly. We may occasionally miss a top-performing post here and there. If you see something we miss, shoot us an email at research@fwiwmedia.com and we’ll be sure to consider for inclusion.
Much of the data that we use in our charts is based on what Zelf calls “prioritized” posts - For purposes of this newsletter, we will refer to them as “Top-Performing Posts.” Those can be defined as any posts that TikTok displays in its search functionality. Many posts that receive very few views (think, less than 100 views) are not distributed widely by TikTok and are excluded from the app’s search functionality entirely.