"It's Viral!" -- A study of the behaviors, practices, and motivations of TikTok Social Activists
This provides insight into TikTok's role in social activism, but it is incremental as it corroborates previous findings on social media use.
The study investigated why social activists use TikTok and their content creation processes, finding that they choose TikTok for its ability to spread messages farther with less effort and that engagement with communities is crucial.
Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are used for social activism purposes, and TikTok is no different. We conducted 9 qualitative semi-structured interviews with social activists who recently posted their videos on TikTok to understand. This study presents an initial look into why TikTok is used by social activists, and what processes they use to carry out this work. The interviews revealed the following main patterns: (1) content creation practices are typical and expected, (2) motivation and inspiration for posting social activist content comes from a wide range of personal sources, (3) social activism has communities on TikTok that provides encouragement and discussion, (4) engagement and interaction with other activists and viewers is a crucial part of content creation as well as social activism, and (5) the main driving force behind picking TikTok over other platforms is the ability to spread messages much farther with less effort. These findings provide insight into the unique factors that TikTok brings for social activists and corroborates previous findings in understanding how social activists use social media for their purposes.