Democracy in ... Romania, in the age of TikTok

Democracy works well if free citizens can make informed choices. These days the quality of information received through social networks is getting worse and worse, and is prone to manipulation. The unbelievable story of the first-round Romanian presidential elections of 2024.

Last Sunday (November 24, 2024) the Romanians held the first round of their presidential election. Inspired by the French constitution, this is a direct universal suffrage, in a two-round election: in the first round, the number of candidates is not limited; in the second round, only the top two, according to the number of votes obtained, may stand.

There are five established parties (USR, AUR, PSD, PNL, UDMR) in Romania; each have a solid territorial base. All the polling institutes predicted that their candidates would obtain a good score. However, to everyone's surprise, once the votes had been counted, it was independent candidate Călin Georgescu (CG hereafter) who came out on top with 22.9% of the vote, followed by Elena Lasconi (USR) with 19.2%. Turnout was 52.5% (out of 18 million voters).

Mr. Georgescu didn't run a traditional campaign as the other candidates did. While the other candidates' supporters put up posters and the candidates faced off on TV with more or less realistic programs, accompanied by “traditional” insults and perpetual accusations of corruption, Mr. Georgescu chose as his main communication channel... TikTok. Yes, it's no joke: he used the Chinese social network, widespread in Romania, whose suspicious nature is prompting the Americans to consider banning it.

One must admit, Mr Georgescu is a handsome man. In his early sixties, with short-cropped gray hair and a tan, he could have had a career in Hollywood in the days of John Wayne and Henry Fonda. On his TikTok account, he has posted several visually appealing videos: CG on horseback, CG swimming in a mountain lake, CG practicing judo... As for the message, he opted for simplicity. Corruption is bad. More purchasing power is good. May God protect Romania. Peace is good; war is bad.

With perfect mastery of the TikTok algorithm, the messages - by no means identified as political campaigning, but personal communication - went “viral” in the IT vocabulary. Millions of Romanians hooked on TikTok began to share it. Make no mistake, it's not just the very young people who use it: 34% of users are aged between 25 and 34. Before the elections, CG had 274,000 followers and 3.7 million likes. In the two months before November 19, his account had 92.8 million views.

But beyond TikTok ads, Mr. Georgescu does have a program and opinions. A great admirer of Vladimir Putin, he systematically criticizes Romania's support for Ukraine, which has been under aggression from Russia since 2022. He criticizes NATO and would like to see Romania distance itself from this organization. His statements containing favorable opinions toward the leader of the despicable Nazi-inspired movement of the 1940s - the Iron Guard - earned him exclusion from the Romanian nationalist party AUR (minority party). A fan of conspiracy theories in all directions, he seriously explains that the Egyptian pyramids have not yet revealed their true raison d'être. Of course, humains never landed on the Moon.

How can we explain his popular success? For some observers of Romanian political life, it was a protest vote against corruption, and against the incessant debates and conflicts between the political parties in power. I don't believe in this explanation, and I'm even suspicious of it. Discontent can be seen in the low turnout, but not in the vote for a candidate unknown by polling institutes.

With a certain sadness, we discover the limits of the democratic system. Democracy only works when individuals are free to make an informed choice. When information no longer comes from serious studies, history lessons or professional journalism, but is transmitted by singing black cats on TikTok and two lines of text, it is no longer information, but mental subordination.

It's a well-known fact that this software's algorithm seeks to stimulate the dopamine or the pleasure neurotransmitter, just as drugs and other addictive products do. It detects and exploits people's emotional preferences, extracting more information from them and progressively enslaving them. TikTok's algorithm is kept secret by ByteDance-Douyin. Experts can speculate as to how it works, but do not know its inner workings, which most likely incorporate elements of artificial intelligence.

How did Mr. Georgescu, clearly not an IT expert, achieve such mastery of the program and advanced communication techniques? How is it possible for a Web 2.0 neophyte to produce videos that appeal so precisely to the emotional imagination of so many voters? Maybe he is extremely shrewd. Maybe he has received good advice from external friends? Time will tell.

If the elections are held as they stand, the second round will be crucial. We should be under no illusions: those who voted for CG in the first round will not change their vote. According to the well-known cognitive bias of anchoring, they will self-justify their choice. These voters will become fervent militants for their candidate, and no reasoned argument will make them change their mind. I hope that the 45% of people who stood in their coach at the first round will wake up at the second round.

The European Commission might ask itself whether it did all it could to prevent large-scale anti-Western mental manipulation. The EU will have to learn lessons for any elections, because, in the hybrid war pitting the democratic bloc against the autocratic bloc, anything goes.