Bridging Political and Spatial Divides? Economic Frames and Emotions in TikTok Debates on Energy and Mobility Transformation

Private households play a pivotal role in shifting to renewable energy, and achieving climate targets, as emissions from buildings and private cars account for a significant share of total emissions. Key policy reforms, driven by national and EU legislations, aim to reduce reliance on fossil fuels for household heating and individualized mobility. However, these transitions can fuel political polarization, as seen in the heated debates over Germany's heating law and the planned 2035 ban on combustion engines. These cases indicate that energy transitions affecting private households are politically but also socially and economically charged. Against that backdrop, it is important to understand the frames and emotionalizations in public discourse around those heating and mobility transition policies. In this study, we focus on TikTok as an emerging arena of political discourse in Germany, which has become a primary news source for many 18- to 34-year-olds across Europe and beyond. We ask, first, for the political and spatial contexts of the users participating in the TikTok debates on these policies, e.g. given the lower support for energy transitions among far-right supporters and in more rural areas. Second, we analyse the emotional profiles of policy-related TikTok posts that employ certain economic frames. Methodologically, we employ a hashtag-based search via TikTok’s Research API to gather video metadata and account information, focusing on content from 2023 to 2025. Using dictionary- and transformer-based approaches, we identify economic framing and emotions in German texts. With the study, we aim to contribute to understanding by whom and how energy transition policies are negotiated in digital public spheres. Specifically, it aims to shed light on the relation of framing, emotionalization, and the implications for political and spatial divides.