Paper short abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic, the energetic crisis, and the volatile global economical context constitute the ideal framework for novel Romanian far-right movements to rise. This could be linked to the using of TikTok to disseminate the populist agenda.

Paper long abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic brought to the fore numerous social problems and challenged social cohesion in most societies since it required people to cease a part of their social rights to fight the spreading of the virus. This moment was beneficial for the far-right movements, which gained momentum in Romania. After the pandemic ended, their agenda has incorporated a plethora of other topics, challenging the mainstream political environment. Recent polls show that approximately 25% of voters would choose one extremist party if elections were held today (HotNews, 2024). After the elections, many people pointed out that a decisive factor for their success was communication through social media, which started to constitute a new tool for sharing the populist agenda (Cervi et al, 2021). Although this is certainly accurate, the extent to which the digital sphere contributed to far-right's boom still needs to be analysed. This research aims to analyse the populist content from TikTok, focusing primarily on content created by Romanian political figures of the illiberal agenda, but will also include other personalities that are vectors for sharing similar ideologies. TikTok has already proved its efficacy in elections, helping Narendra Modi to win the general elections in India in 2019 (IANS, 2019), but could it be sufficient to place Romanian far-right movements in the political mainstream?