Archiving the Present: The Social Conflict Between Romanians at Home and in the Diaspora on TikTok
Archiving the Present: The Social Conflict Between Romanians at Home and in the Diaspora on TikTok

Summary/Abstract: This paper qualitatively analyzes the social conflict emerged on TikTok between Romanians living in the diaspora and those residing in Romania during the 2025 presidential elections. These elections were characterized by a strong polarization of political opinions. The paper examines the relationships established between the platform, algorithms, political factors, and human actors. At the same time, it attempts to address the methodological challenges of conducting qualitative research in the online environment. TikTok is conceptualized here as an archive of the present. It is the space where users produce and preserve multimodal content through which they express their political opinions and interact with one another. The re-archiving of online content enabled the creation of a database consisting of 250 posts disseminated by users between May 5 and June 5, 2025. This database was used for qualitative content analysis. The research findings reveal the mutual antagonization between Romanians inside and outside the country’s borders through stereotypes and their integration into local and global socio-economic processes. Social labeling regarding electoral behavior and social values – expressed through oppositions such as civilization vs. barbarism, the European Union vs. Russia, education vs. lack of education – together with the problematization of non-residents’ voting rights, reflect social class tensions. In addition, the study highlights how TikTok contributes to the deterritorialization of nationalism and political participation as a result of migratory processes. The paper emphasizes the diaspora’s double marginalization: by host countries and, more recently, by the country of origin.

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