Paper Short Abstract:

The 2024 Romanian elections were marked by a controversy surrounding the annulment of the presidential election's second round. This paper aims to explore how Romanian populist leaders used (and are using) a sensory arsenal of images, sounds and speech, co-opting TikTok as a space for the performance of authenticity, charisma and even what Nadia Urbinati (2019) very accurately called "me, the people", an image calculated to break the dualism between one and many.

Paper Abstract:

The November-December presidential and parliamentary elections in Romania were disrupted by the Constitutional Court's decision to annul the second round of the presidential election on the grounds that one candidate had not complied with the electoral code. In addition, Romania's telecoms regulator and other key institutions even called for TikTok to be banned after the presidential candidate backed by the Sovereignist Alliance emerged victorious. "He stayed under the radar" was the most common explanation among journalists and leaders of the main political parties. Taking this ” technological momentum” (Hughes 1994) as a starting point and using a methodology inspired by Postill's (2013) epidemiography, this paper aims to explore how political actors used (and are using) a sensory arsenal of images, sounds and speech, co-opting TikTok as a space for the performance of authenticity, charisma and even what Nadia Urbinati (2019) very accurately called "me, the people", an image calculated to break the dualism between one and many.