Politics for kids these days: political authenticity and TikTok vernacular in the 2025 Australian federal election

TikTok's rising popularity, especially among younger voters, has drawn Australian political parties into new and unfamiliar terrain. Conceptualising political authenticity as a mediated performance, we examine how the Australian Labor Party, the Liberal Party, the Australian Greens, and Pauline Hanson's One Nation shaped political messaging on TikTok during the 2025 federal election campaign period. Through a thematic multimodal analysis of 517 TikTok posts, we analysed how parties adapted their communication to fit the platform's youth-driven vernacular. Findings suggest that parties pursued authenticity by adopting recognisable, but varied, TikTok styles and genres. Our study highlights the connection between political authenticity and the cultural logic of social media platforms. We argue that political authenticity on TikTok is platform-contingent, built around the appearance of cultural fluency that is shaped by the vernacular expectations of the communicative environment of the platform.