The “TikTok Messiah”: Ritualized Emotional Performance, Memetic Sound, and Mobilization in Romania’s 2024 Presidential Elections

Abstract

Since 2024, TikTok’s potential to influence political outcomes has gained heightened visibility. In Romania, the unexpected success of an independent far-right candidate in the first round of the presidential election was widely attributed to his TikTok-based campaign. On the platform, supporters combine text, sound, and image, making a multimodal analytical approach appropriate. We integrate Nabi’s emotion-as-frames model and Tagg’s musical communication model to examine how popular culture and political expression intersect on TikTok. The analysis draws on two datasets analyzed using two complementary methods. First, we employ quantitative content analysis to examine videos and metadata from the calingeorgescuoficial TikTok account (742 items) alongside metadata from 1,400 videos using aural meme templates. Second, we apply a newly developed qualitative approach to an in-depth analysis of a subsample of 150 videos employing popular memetic sounds in support of the politician. The novelty of the proposed multimodal analytical approach consists of two layers, denotative and connotative, and two dimensions, visual and aural, to provide an analytical model for memetic expressions of political support on TikTok that lack verbal elements. The results reveal the strategic use of a wide range of memetic sounds—from hip-hop and pop-folk to military marches and religious chants—to mobilize voters dissatisfied with the political establishment and to amplify nationalist sentiment centered on claims of national sovereignty around the candidate. We identify how established narratives are repurposed and performed on camera through emotional cues. Visuals anchor these emotions in diverse settings—from everyday life to protest scenes—while sounds provide scripts for communal performance.