Introduction to the Special Issue of “TikTok and Social Movements”

Abstract

This Special Issue of “TikTok and Social Movements” emerges from an attempt to map out the landscape of social movements happening on TikTok, drawing from the online symposium “TikTok and Social Movements” hosted in September 2021 by the TikTok Cultures Research Network, a research portal for interdisciplinary scholarship on TikTok cultures. The recent growing popularity of TikTok has transformed the cultures and practices of social movements worldwide. Through the platform’s participatory affordances, many users find meaningful ways to engage with the platform and its cultures, by leading and participating in a variety of activist initiatives for global awareness, social change, and civic politics. Within this context, this introduction to the Special Issue titled “TikTok and Social Movements” begins by thinking about how social media pop cultures have served as a vehicle for mobilizing and engaging in social movements for social (in)justice and politics in the era of social media. By situating TikTok, a nascent platform and culture of short video, within the ongoing discussion of digitally mobilized movements and social justice, this introduction addresses several crucial points to consider when discussing TikTok cultures and social movements that are happening or interrupted on the platform. These points are interrogated with more details and cultural contexts in the five case studies and three expert commentaries in this Special Issue. Specifically, the collection of papers interrogate how TikTok’s interactive and creative affordances have augmented and altered our cultures, practices, politics, and power dynamics of engaging with publics for various beliefs and social agendas.

The platformization of consumer culture: A theoretical framework

“…The platform’s algorithm, which promotes content using trending sounds, can further contribute to such a standardization by amplifying popular audio memes and encouraging users to participate in these trends (Klug et al, 2021). Although such memetic content production has an empowering facet, since facilitates the interaction among massive and highly dispersed networks of social media users (Rogers, 2019)—(even allowing political mobilizations—see Lee and Abidin, 2023), it, nonetheless, makes consumers’ cultural production extremely datafied , and so very easy to be identified, retrieved, and manipulated by platforms’ systems of surveillance (Darmody and Zwick, 2020).…”

A pentadic analysis of TikTok marketing in tourism: The case of Penang, Malaysia

“…Edensor (2000) relates how tourism has performative elements, and that mobilities are an embodiment of place imaginations, identities, and motivations. This is manifest in TikTok, where content creators (and influencers) are equipped with multiple attempts at curating a desired 'self' and video that is portrayed to a global, digital audience (Lee and Abidin, 2023). More importantly, these videos are accompanied by music, themes and genres that viewers can like, and share with others in a social setting (Bossen and Kottasz, 2020).…”

Calculated Nationalism in Contemporary South Korea

“…First, the victims' life trajectories as portrayed in the memorial museum and through interviews Choi 2010;Son and Cho 2009). Second, media report frames social movements about the "comfort women" in Korea and/or Japan (Lee and Min 2011;Kim and Woo 2016). Third, memories and discourses as represented in documentaries, school texts, and the Statue of Peace (Jeong 2016;Kim 2018b).…”

“…Second, studies have examined media report frames of social movements about the "comfort women" in Korea and/or Japan (Lee and Min 2011;Kim and Woo 2016). Lee and Min (2011: 42), in their study of the media reportages on social movements about the "comfort women," attempt to overcome the limitations of the analysis of the media text, by taking into consideration the politico-historical contexts-employing "collective action frames" (Benford and Snow 2000;Snow 2007; both cited in Lee and Min 2011).…”

“…Second, studies have examined media report frames of social movements about the "comfort women" in Korea and/or Japan (Lee and Min 2011;Kim and Woo 2016). Lee and Min (2011: 42), in their study of the media reportages on social movements about the "comfort women," attempt to overcome the limitations of the analysis of the media text, by taking into consideration the politico-historical contexts-employing "collective action frames" (Benford and Snow 2000;Snow 2007; both cited in Lee and Min 2011). The approach aims to reveal the level of seriousness, unfairness, and immorality of the social condition, ascertain who or what the origins of the problem are, and how to redress the problem (Snow and Benford 1992; cited in Lee and Min 2011: 43).…”