Our sample of political content shows how campaigns and individuals have been using the video-sharing platform * UK general election live: latest updates * Live tracker: UK general election results 2024 If a week is a long time in politics, the five-year gap between UK elections is an eternity. The political landscape has changed dramatically since the Tories’ landslide victory in 2019 – but so too has the social media landscape. In 2019 TikTok was, according to a Guardian explainer, “a video-sharing app which has become phenomenally popular with teenagers”. Continue reading...

If Keir Starmer wins on Thursday, he will have the power to free our data, jump-start the NHS and strip friction from our daily lives. Here’s how • Don’t get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article here Barring an asteroid strike, Keir Starmer is going to be the UK prime minister in three days. Given the lead in polling, I’d probably bet on him over an asteroid, too. Labour will come into government with a broken state, a flatlining economy and no money. A thin manifesto and enormous parliamentary majority means the party will almost certainly end up stretching further afield for ideas about how to deal with that trilemma from hell. Continue reading...

In some constituencies – often with large Muslim populations – a parallel viral campaign focuses on emotive issues such as Gaza that rarely feature in national coverage When Keir Starmer was interviewed for the Sun’s YouTube live stream last week, only about 10,000 people tuned in to watch him pledge to get tough on illegal immigration. Under pressure to prove he would speed up deportations, the Labour leader singled out one example in particular: “At the moment people coming from countries like Bangladesh are not being removed because they’re not being processed.” Continue reading...