TikTok and everyday life: making sense of the meanings and politics of scrolling
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Schellewald, Andreas. 2024. TikTok and everyday life: making sense of the meanings and politics of scrolling. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]
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Text (TikTok and everyday life: making sense of the meanings and politics of scrolling)
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Abstract or Description
Every day, millions of people take out their phones, open apps such as TikTok, and start scrolling. They watch videos, ‘like’ them, leave or read comments, and occasionally share the content they discover with others. A lot is being said about scrollers in debates. Yet, their stories, voices, and lived experiences rarely stand in the foreground. Without these millions consuming content on a daily basis, digital platforms like TikTok would not exist. Their popularity and commercial viability rest on continuous consumption, meaning, the formation of an audience attracting creators and advertisers alike. This thesis takes TikTok as a case and investigates it from an audience studies perspective. It ethnographically enters the world of scrollers in an attempt to unpack what it means to consume content online.
To do so, the thesis draws on data collected over one and a half years of fieldwork. During this period, the TikTok consumption of 30 young adults based in the United Kingdom was studied using methods such as interviews, media mapping techniques, participant observations, and digital fieldwork. Through the collected data, an ethnographically situated account of online content consumption was developed. This account outlines how scrollers engage with the TikTok “For You” page as an everyday technology and resource generative of pleasure, relaxation, stimulation, inspiration, and social connection. It discusses how scrollers navigate TikTok as a commercial online space and the challenges they experience in that process. In that course, the thesis confronts concerns about the addictive design of apps like TikTok and the growing personalisation of media environments.
Participants were found to appropriate TikTok in creative ways as an escape site to manage their degrees of social connectedness. TikTok enabled them to momentarily disconnect and withdraw from social pressures or obligations. Simultaneously, the app provided a resource for meaningful reconnection through sharing content. Using TikTok was not unproblematic, however. Participants got carried away scrolling, and in response to that actively developed tactics to break the endless flow of the “For You” page. Likewise, they negotiated concerns about TikTok’s surveillance practices in a way that rendered their relationship with the app tense and fragile. Their trust in TikTok was conditional and continuously put to the test. Unravelling these dynamics of online content consumption, the thesis contributes to our understanding of social media like TikTok, digital everyday life, and their politics.
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Item Type: |
Thesis (Doctoral) |
| Identification Number (DOI): |
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| Keywords: |
TikTok; audience studies; social media; algorithms; personalisation; recommender systems; polymedia; ethnography; everyday life; media consumption |
| Departments, Centres and Research Units: |
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| Date: |
31 July 2024 |
| Item ID: |
37490 |
| Date Deposited: |
21 Aug 2024 13:38 |
| Last Modified: |
21 Aug 2024 13:43 |
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URI: |
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