Political Clippers on TikTok: Double Gatekeeping, Curatorial Power, and Algorithmic Amplification Beyond Follower Count
UIN Sunan Ampel Surabaya
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.56943/sujana.v4i3.1058The rapid growth of TikTok has transformed political communication by enabling political content to circulate beyond conventional follower-based networks. Existing research, however, has predominantly focused on politicians, influencers, and institutional media, leaving the role of political clippers as curatorial actors insufficiently examined. This study aims to identify and classify political clippers in Indonesia, to examine their curatorial practices, and to explain how these practices contribute to the emergence of Curation Politics. A qualitative descriptive design was employed, integrating netnography, qualitative content analysis, and digital trace analysis. Data were collected from 20 purposively selected political clipper accounts and 100 high-performing TikTok videos observed between March and May 2025. The findings show that political clippers operate along three intersecting dimensions: political-figure orientation, issue orientation, and content logic. Four recurring curatorial practices were identified: selective extraction, compression and editing, framing, and algorithmic optimization. The findings further reveal a decoupling between follower count and political visibility, as accounts with relatively small audiences were able to achieve millions of views. These results indicate that political visibility on TikTok is increasingly shaped by decentralized curatorial power and algorithmic amplification rather than by follower size alone. The study proposes Curation Politics as a conceptual framework for understanding fragmented political meaning and emerging forms of digital political participation.
Keywords: Algorithmic Amplification Curation Politics Digital Curation Political Clippers TikTok
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