POLITICAL BRANDING IN SOCIAL NETWORKS (USA PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN’24 IN TIK-TOK).

The subject of this paper is the communication strategies through which the candidates for the US presidency in 2024, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, imposed their individual political brands in the social network Tik-Tok. The last three weeks of the election campaigns of the two candidates on Tik-Tok – the period between the 15th of October 2024 and the 5th of November 2024 – spans the timeline covered by the current study. This final stage of the campaign is often referred to as the phase of most intense “bombardment” of the public with political messages. The focus here is laid on the specific image-building techniques and messages used by the two presidential candidates. The methods of data processing and interpretation used in the study include detailed information search, empirical evidence extraction, monitoring, discursive and comparative analysis of the data obtained. As a result, the current paper leads to the observation that Kamala Harris and Donald Trump demonstrated a high degree of adaptability to the new communication platform, effectively coding their brand messages in line with the expectations and attitudes of specific audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]