How TikTok can potentially get a president elected

Romanian-born Corneliu Bjola is professor of Digital Diplomacy at the University of Oxford. He is an expert in the methods used to counter digital propaganda. 

Many experts are convinced that TikTok played a major role in propelling Calin Georgescu, a virtually unknown far-right, pro-Russia candidate, into first place in the first round of Romania's presidential election on November 24. Georgescu now faces progressive liberal Elena Lasconi in the runoff on Sunday.

In this interview with DW, Professor Bjola explains how manipulation methods work on social media in the context of elections and gives his view of what happened in the run-up to Romania's recent elections.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

DW: How was it possible for a largely unknown candidate to run such a successful election campaign almost exclusively on social media and make it into the runoff for the post of Romanian president?

Corneliu Bjola: This is unprecedented, not only in Romania, but also, I think, in many other European and American elections. I think there are a couple of things we need to look at.

The first thing is the role of the new digital platforms. In the past, digital campaigns on Facebook, Twitter [X] or Instagram used to play a secondary, supporting role to the real campaign. By "real campaign" I mean the one where people go out and shake hands, participate in debates and so on. What we see nowadays is exactly the opposite: Social media actually now plays the primary role.

Why is that? Because this candidate [Calin Georgescu] has no infrastructure whatsoever: no political party, no networks. We don't know who the people around him are. We don't know him personally, his biography. There are all kinds of unanswered questions.

While all the other candidates spent a lot of money on traditional campaigning, this person says that he had zero funding for the entire operation. Although some credible sources showed that it could have cost at least €2 million. Where this money came from, we don't yet know.

Dozens of influencers admitted after the first round that they had been paid by a third-party platform to post hashtags that were intended to attract bots. How does that work?

First of all, how do you make an unknown candidate known to the larger public, at least on TikTok? A few techniques were quite easily indentified in the preliminary analysis.

In the initial part of the campaign, the candidate hired a network of influencers. They were not actually asked to promote him. They were asked to speak about the ideal political candidate. This is priming. They used certain keywords: "integrity," "independence," "professional," "should speak foreign languages." This is what priming means: You don't speak explicitly, but you shape the perceptions of the audience about expectations in relation to a particular subject.

And this is when people started to click because these were influencers, a large network of influencers, who, by the way, were paid for this kind of campaign. They didn't know. Some of them regretted their role in this campaign because they had no idea they were actually supporting Georgescu.

The moment this priming was completed and the people started watching it [the campaign], another technique emerged. In the comments related to these clips, you see hashtags and probably trolls or bots, commenting, associating those primed features with a particular candidate. The hashtag that was used in the comments, for instance, was "vote Georgescu." That was how the connection was made indirectly to a particular profile of a candidate, who was presented neutrally.

This is where the second technique emerged: "astroturfing," which refers to a different type of technique, namely when you try to create the impression of organic momentum in the sense that there is a vast number of people who really like this candidate, even if the actual number is quite low. And that momentum has the role of disseminating the message — by word of mouth, of course — and also to increase credibility.

You can also use hashtags after the words, to emphasize certain topics like independence or anti-European or anti-NATO messages. That is called "issue framing," where you basically consolidate a particular message around a very short hashtag, which has been used a lot in other contexts.

What are bots and trolls?

Bots are automated accounts that react to different messages. They were used a lot on Twitter at the beginning. Imagine that you send a message about climate change, for example. The bot immediately sees the message "climate change" and is programmed — this is an algorithm — to automatically reinforce or deny the message every time it sees the words "climate change."

Trolls, on the other hand, are humans, with real or fake profiles. The role of trolls is basically to disrupt, mainly to disrupt the other candidates. So, if someone says, "Look, I don't think this is a genuine campaign, I think this is something that is artificially inflated with networks" and casts doubt, a troll immediately shows up. They use very inflammatory language because their role is to intimidate, to silence you.

Russia has denied any involvement, but there have already been allegations and evidence of such interference in other parts of the world. Can the source of this technological manipulation be identified?

We are starting to get bits and pieces of information now because TikTok has been under pressure from the European Parliament. And this information seems to suggest that there was indeed external support.

It shouldn't surprise us. Russia has been involved in all kinds of interference, not only hybrid, but we see now everywhere in Europe threats of sabotage in the context of the war in Ukraine, since their desire is to undermine western support for Ukraine.

So, in this geopolitical context, it shouldn't surprise us that Russia is trying to basically eliminate or neutralize one country or another. They tried to do this with the Republic of Moldova.

Romania — and this is interesting — was spared, and that probably gave the authorities a false sense of security. Maybe we can talk about ignorance or incompetence; maybe we can also talk about complicity from the services with this campaign because of ideological affinities with the candidate.

It looks like there were networks, even on TikTok, coming from various entities affiliated with Russia. That's my suspicion as well. I think there was a clear Russian hand involved in this.

What about the societal aspect? Did Georgescu's extremist messages fall on fertile ground in Romanian society?

Indeed, a message is unlikely to be accepted if it deviates a lot from social expectations. Romania is now probably in the best economic state it has been in the past 70 years. So, there is something that does not fit into the picture.

We have some evidence to suggest that over the past three years, money has been pumped out through various channels to create the impression that everything about being a member of the EU is wrong.

Is that a Russian technique? Yes! I've seen that, for instance, in the Baltic states, if you look all over the countries of Eastern Europe it's the same message: "You are doing worse as a member of the EU," which is a total contradiction of reality.

Are secret services — not only in Romania, but worldwide — equipped to fight this constantly evolving technological war?

The patterns of Russian interference are well known, and I'm not surprised. It's always about promoting a candidate that is aligned with the agenda of the Kremlin and undermining the position of those who oppose it or are more reserved.

Now, you should be prepared for that, also be adaptable and flexible. You have to learn from mistakes. The Republic of Moldova, for instance, a country that doesn't have the capacities of Romania, managed to resist and cope quite successfully with a very toxic and aggressive attack one month ago. Why? Because they expected it. The Baltic states have elections and there are no problems. How come? Estonia, for instance, has the highest rate in Europe of arresting Russian agents.

You have to protect yourself and expect these things to happen. To understand and to develop resilience against hybrid attacks.

Edited by: Aingeal Flanagan