For news publishers, TikTok has become a vast opportunity to reach new audiences and raise brand awareness. And they have been using it. Despite fears of Chinese government influence, which are especially widespread in the US, and difficulties in monetising content, outlets still see the potential that the platform can provide.

The Fix regularly looks into European publishers’ presence on TikTok, ranking them to observe content and audience interest shifts.

Since our last ranking, the leader has not changed, but there are new entries in the ranking and new interesting trends to observe. Let’s see what leading media outlets on TikTok are at the end of the first quarter of 2024.

Editor’s note: This article is the latest instalment of The Fix’s regular rankings of European news publishers on TikTok (see the previous ranking for 2023). If we missed somebody in our ranking or if you would like to suggest other changes, please message newsroom@thefix.media

Daily Mail remains on top, and leaders have consistently grown their audience

For the last three years the UK’s leading tabloid Daily Mail has been at the top of our list. A year after our last ranking, the situation remains the same. Daily Mail showed a remarkable growth in followers by 90%, up from an already high base.

The top 5 hasn’t changed much overall, with the BBC, Sky News and Brut remaining the biggest news outlets on TikTok. They have also grown considerably, often by 50% to 90%. The BBC’s main account showed slower growth, but the BBC News account grew by an impressive 300%.

But they face demand for “light-hearted” content

Although our ranking features only news publishers, TikTok is a crowded place with a lot of competition from influencers and entertainment accounts. For comparison, while Daily Mail has 8.2 million followers, the UK-based entertainment publisher LADbible (not present in our ranking) boasts over 13.4 million.

As Deutsche Welle’s audience development manager Erika Marzano wrote for The Fix, “the media industry finds itself competing not just with fellow news outlets but also with a myriad of creators, entertainers, and users”. News outlets have to constantly think about how to strike a balance between reporting hard news and feel-good stories to retain and grow their audience on TikTok.

One piece of advice for news publishers as they compete with entertainment accounts is promoting authentic voices. From DW experience, as shared by Marzano, “DW’s hosts aren’t just your ordinary news show anchors; they are seen as peers helping the audience conveying reliable information. Authenticity is the name of the game. Our hosts are the face of DW on TikTok, connecting with the young audience through shared experiences and genuine engagement”.

Journalists vs influencers challenge

Our ranking focuses only on news publishers, but TikTok has also seen the rise of individual journalist-influencers. We didn’t include them in the ranking, but they represent an important trend in today’s media ecosystem. News outlets find themselves both competing against and successfully partnering with journalist-influencers.

French YouTube blogger Hugo Travers, who leads a news TikTok page Hugo Decrypte, has 5.8 million followers on the platform. Since last year, he has shown a 70% growth, being only second after Brut among French news accounts. Reporting for Gen Z on YouTube first, Hugo Travers believed that TikTok also had a big young audience interested in politics that was looking for creators to explain it. He was right.

Ukrainian influencer Valeria Shashenok also managed to grab Gen Z attention. She develops news content about Russia’s war against Ukraine in a creative and engaging style that attracted over a million followers. Amidst war fatigue, using TikTok as a tool to attract attention to the invasion and remind the world about the ongoing conflict seems to be a powerful approach that local publishers can consider.

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30 leading European news publishers on TikTok in 2024