What The Hell America!

Media Matters created a new TikTok account using a device used solely for related research and engaged with content from five MAGA-approved podcasters.

We identified five popular online shows that hosted President Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 election and self-identified as being supposedly nonpolitical, per our March study. These shows were Full Send, The Joe Rogan Experience, Impaulsive with Logan Paul, This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von, and Flagrant, which all self-identified as comedy shows. 

We then engaged with a TikTok account of the show or the show’s host (or, in the case of Joe Rogan, who does not have an official account, with a popular fan account that exclusively posts clips from his show) — watching and “liking” each account’s 10 most recent videos. 

We then navigated to our “For You” page and began scrolling, eventually requesting a record of the account’s watch history. From that data, we evaluated the first 447 videos served to the account’s “For You” page after the 50 videos we initially watched (10 from each of the accounts) in order to train the algorithm. 

Of the 447, 22 videos became unavailable some time after we viewed them on the FYP, resulting in 425 videos that were then independently assessed  by three researchers to determine which of nine categories fit the video best: conspiracy theory, toxic masculinity, medical misinformation, racist/white supremacist, transphobia, prepper, right-wing media, video unavailable, and general. Each video was reviewed individually and given a final code if two of the three researchers independently awarded it the same code after a blind review. Videos that did not achieve this level of consensus were reviewed again by two coders who then reconciled discrepancies.

We defined “conspiracy theory” posts as those that claim the existence of a secret manipulation of events, people, or situations by powerful forces or that oppose mainstream agreement among experts qualified to evaluate the claim’s accuracy.

We defined “toxic masculinity” as misogynistic content meant to attack, degrade, or mock a woman or support anti-feminism and the men’s rights movement; videos positively promoting Andrew Tate or imagery of Tate/audio of his voice; posts promoting traditional notions of masculinity; posts utilizing language such as “alpha” or “beta”; and content promoting dominance over others and a “lone wolf” mentality.

We defined “medical misinformation” posts as those that spread medical information or advice counter to mainstream agreement among medical professionals. These posts often spread false information about vaccines, the pharmaceutical industry, or modern medicine.

We defined “racist/white supremacist” posts as those that attack, degrade, or mock a particular race or ethnic group or support white supremacy by using white supremacist talking points such as “white pride” or “white lives matter.”

We defined “transphobia” as posts that attack or mock trans people.

We defined “doomsday prepper” as posts suggesting an impending civil war/government destruction and encouraging users to gather materials and make plans for the survival of a major disaster.

We defined “right-wing media” posts as those that contain video or audio from prominent far-right media figures such as Ben Shapiro, Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson, Steven Crowder, Paul Nicholas Miller, and Nick Fuentes.

We defined “general” posts as any that did not fall into any of the aforementioned categories.