Network Contagion Research Institute Intelligence Report 5 international backers. Though TikTok has denied claims of anti-Israel bias, mounting research on its coverage of the ongoing Middle East conflict has sparked the interest of U.S. lawmakers.6 The analysis undertaken in this current study assumes a similar experimental design to that of the WSJ though it focuses on domestic Chinese bellwether issues rather than global geopolitical concerns. While user journeys represent a powerful tool for exposing algorithmic bias on TikTok, the scope of CCP digital influence operations is significantly broader and cross-platform in nature. One such influence vector the findings of this report illustrate is “frontier influencers,” which are defined by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) as: “[An] increasingly popular set of YouTube accounts that feature mainly female Chinabased ethnic-minority influencers from the troubled frontier regions of Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia, hereafter referred to as ‘frontier influencers’ or ‘frontier accounts.’”7 As ASPI details, the CCP weaponizes prima facia benign travel vloggers to manage perceptions of China abroad, particularly as relates to restive border areas like Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia. As the report remarks, one tactic employed by these frontier influencers is ensuring “that state-backed content ranks well in search results because search-engine algorithms tend to prioritize fresh content and channels that post regularly.”8 As will be discussed below, our user journey findings directly confirm ASPI’s 2021 findings. Alongside the positive amplification performed by third-party frontier influencers and high-reach official CCP media accounts, hashtag hijacking is a technique that Beijing has employed to suppress undesired narratives. Hashtag hijacking is the deliberate attachment of trending hashtags or keywords to unrelated content or posts to 1) boost engagement for the network of bots performing the hijacking, and 2) suppress undesirable content bearing a target hashtag by flooding the social discourse with white noise (also bearing the target hashtag or keyword). A dramatic example of hashtag hijacking was on display during the CCP’s 2022 crackdown on the protests against its zero-COVID policy that erupted across the mainland. As reported by The Guardian: “...Networks of coordinated bot accounts were targeting non-Chinese social media platforms to crowd out genuine posts about the demonstrations with spam content and by hijacking hashtags of names of Chinese cities. It said China’s government was most likely to be behind the tactic.” 9 6 Sung, M. (2023, Nov 14). TikTok disputes claims of anti-Israel bias amid calls to ban the app. TechCrunch. https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/14/tiktok-disputes-claims-of-anti-israel-bias-amid-calls-to-ban-the-app-palestine/ 7 Ryan, F., Impiombato, D., & Pai, H.-T. (2022, Oct 20). Frontier influencers: The new face of China's propaganda. Australian Strategic Policy Institute. https://www.aspi.org.au/report/frontier-influencers 8 Ibid. 9 Milmo, D. (2022, Dec 4). China accused of flooding social media with spam to crowd out protest news. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/04/china-accused-of-flooding-social-media-spam-covidprotests