Social media, once for holiday pictures, dog filters and keeping in touch with family and friends, has rapidly become something new. Social media has become an integral engine for political disruption, and this has become an unprecedented security dilemma for the traditional establishments of power. At the centre of this dilemma is TikTok, a rapidly growing platform, representing a monumental shift over the control of global discourse. In the past, global powers such as the US have maintained this power through the production, exportation and censorship of knowledge, curating domestic and international narratives by using established media.

Now, because of the rise of TikTok and the prevalence of social media in everyone’s lives, the foundations on which established media sit have started to show cracks. I think that this can be attributed to how social media has led to the birth of the democratisation of discourse. Control over discourse has shifted from intellectual elites, in newsrooms and academic circles, to anyone with a phone and something to say. We can see this shift happening in real time, with political campaigns like Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign, which mobilised young people as well as people who wouldn’t typically be involved in politics. Also, we can see it in social justice movements like the ‘Purple Out’ for femicide in South Africa^[1] and citizen reporting on ICE movements in the US, documenting abuse, and people producing educational material on their rights and what to do when you encounter ICE.^[2] Finally, there has been the birth of a new breed of content creators, such as Dylan Page, Under the Desk News and Alex Pearlman (Pearlmainia500), who have amassed followings through reporting and commentating on news as it happens, creating an online discourse which anyone can participate in, bypassing the gatekeepers of discourse.

This shift is not simply a cultural phenomenon, but a crisis of knowledge security. The distrust of foreign influence, especially involving information infrastructure, was put on display clearly by the US government forcing TikTok to be sold to an American company, over concerns of its Chinese ownership. Also, the ability of decentralised information sharing was exemplified through how the discourse around the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza was controlled by public opinion online, having the ability to disrupt the dominant discourse. Although the flotilla failed in breaking the siege, the disseminated narrative was able to greatly impact global sentiment, with Italian dock workers mobilising to shut down ports and pressuring for the eventual deployment of Spanish and Italian naval ships.^[3][4]

In this article, I will argue that TikTok epitomises the shift in authority of information, presenting a security threat to the US though fundamentally impacting the US’s ability to shape discourse and dominate knowledge production.

TikTok has become a catalyst for the democratisation of discourse, having the ability to shift the seat of informational dominance. Traditional media has been constructed to be a vehicle of reputable knowledge exportation, a model journalist, editors and intellectuals who are the arbiters of what is ‘newsworthy’ as well as the framing of information. This dominant structure, which has traditionally favoured elites and their perspectives, often omitting, through either ignorance or malice, alternative and marginalised perspectives.

The birth of this new online egalitarian discourse threatens to displace the ‘old guard’, as social media platforms allow for anyone to be a disseminator of information by giving anyone, through just their phones, the ability to be an editor, journalist, commentator or pundit. Through the very nature of social media discourse is responsive, immediate and critical, sustained by the very culture which produces it. This phenomenon is all about authority. Creators such as Dylan Page, Under the Desk News, and GoattMeall have gained authority and legitimacy through critical and rapid news reporting, but more than that, creators such as GoattMeall and PearlMainia500 don’t just report but also contribute to the discourse through nuanced political opinions, echoing public sentiment. From activists to political commentators, social media has given the power to reach millions.

Also, because of the fact that this discourse is sustained through the culture that produces it, all creators who voice their opinion become answerable to the audience to whom they are speaking. This cyclical production of discourse democratises knowledge through real-time critique and discussion, allowing for constant participation and a collaborative production of knowledge. Creating a radically decentralised web of knowledge production and exportation.

The US, which has relied on traditional media to shape its domestic and international opinion on its projection of power, uses media to garner support for its policies. This shift is a profound threat to its security. The US relies on this control to manage their position within the international order, allowing for the US to influence its allies, coerce rivals and manage crises. As the truth becomes fragmented across millions of independent people, the US’s ability to control and influence geopolitics is diminished. This for the US is a major blow to its ability to assert its strategic ambitions, compromising the narrative that the US wants. While empowering the people, the democratisation of information has become a fundamental challenge to the US geopolitical agenda.

Social media has the ability to bypass traditional political roadblocks to grassroots movements. This dissemination of information allows citizens to organise movements and give reports from the ground, allowing for fast and reliable reporting of ‘facts on the ground’ which traditional media may not cover. The success of Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign relied heavily on his use of social media to generate momentum outside of traditional media coverage endorsement. Also, the ‘purple out’ movement in South Africa has demonstrated the power of social media to bring attention to issues and create a discourse about issues which aren’t covered by traditional media, representing the power social media has in collective organising and generating grassroots pressure.

The US’s deep distrust of foreign states’ control of knowledge is perfectly represented by the US forcing a sale of TikTok to a US company. This isn’t just over data security but representative of the anxiety of the US losing control of the narrative domestically and by extension the international narrative.

At its core, this is a challenge to knowledge security, a nation’s ability to dominate the integrity, control and deployment of information in a changing and contested geopolitical environment. Traditionally, the US has used its dominant media industry as a way to export power, TikTok’s owners ByteDance being a Chinese company means that it is subject to Chinese law, this means that a platform which exports information to millions of Americans every day with everything from news to celebrity gossip is not accountable to the US government and under the control of a foreign entity and most importantly outside of US control. For the US, this gives a foreign power an opportunity to weaponise the algorithm and have the ability to dictate which narratives become the predominant ones, and the US narrative will be drowned out. Diminishing the US’s ability to dominate the global discourse on which they rely.

The US approach to having TikTok under US control doesn’t achieve what the US hopes, as it doesn’t address the decentralised, bottom-up discourse and only addresses its anxieties of Chinese intervention. The platform’s core power of an individual’s ability to create discourse with ease, remains intact. The US’s security dilemma still stands as TikTok’s power isn’t gained through ownership but its ability to platform every voice, giving anyone the ability to challenge the state’s narrative and making information one of the most dominant security threats to the US today. The future of US national security depends on developing the ability to navigate as well as contend with the persistence of the growing online egalitarian discourse, which threatens to control the US narrative, taking away its power of narrative.