Did you know that Tik Tok could be a politically charged platform full of ethical and moral debates, not just dance trends?

Rebekah Motooka
Language and Digital Media, Ling 3800-800
Advisor:  Professor Kira Hall
LURA 2021

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5XkJp0Ousw]

TikTok took the world by storm in 2016, and by 2020 it had over 850 million active users. Its popularity led to the creation of many specific video types and content creators, resulting in a broad spectrum of content and users. For example, a user named @420doggface208 recently drew national attention when he posted content of himself singing to Fleetwood Mac while skateboarding and drinking cranberry juice, which led to him being duetted by Mick Fleetwood, who sang along with him. TikTok even used this example as an opportunity to create a commercial that showcased just how oddly specialized TikToks are and how they can lead to the “funniest” interactions.

TikTok is an algorithm-based site and has specific subcultures ranging from “Straight TikTok” to “Black Alt Punk TikTok.” To quote Emma Sharp’s (2020) article Everything you Need to Know About TikTok: The World’s Fastest Growing Social Media Network, “Like many other social media platforms at present, TikTok is a video driven social media platform. The difference is, there is no alternative form of content such as text-based posts or static images... Similarly to other platforms users can use and search hashtags to find common content.” 

The video essay I created for the course “Language and Digital Media” examines the conservative and liberal divide on TikTok and how users, in spite of algorithms that deepen this divide, manage to share content with the other side. I wanted to analyse a platform that both public and academic groups generally didn’t take seriously to show how much linguistic potential there is to be mined from a site like TikTok. 

Specifically, the video essay explores how Country Music Tik Tok, which is traditionally viewed as belonging to the conservative side of the algorithm, has been taken over by Liberal Tik Tok. However, as my video essay reveals, the content that is shared by Liberal TikTok users deepens the divide even further by using what sociolinguists Crispin Thurlow and Adam Jaworski (2011) have described as “elitist stance taking.” The four videos I analyze, “disguised” as country music videos, each make fun of convervative political ideologies by advancing claims “to both distinction and superiority” (Thurlow and Jaworski, 2011: 231). 

My project is concerned with the following question: Why is country music inherently a part of the conservative side of TikTok, and why did Liberal Tik Tok try to overtake it? I argue that country music is deeply associated with  conservative identity and that the liberal side of TikTok uses country music subversively to promote liberal ideologies through a form of elitist stancetaking that infuriates conservative Tik Tok users. The concept of liberal elitist stancetaking enables us to see how the liberal side of TikTok creates videos that make their ideologies seem more ethical, moral, and caring than conservatives’ “ignorant” ideologies. TikTok users may be challenging the algorithms that lead to different worlds of digital users, but they do so in a way that creates a further divide in an already split political climate.  

Work cited

Sharp, Emma. “Everything You Need To Know About TikTok: The World's Fastest Growing Social Media Network.” Awin, 29 Oct. 2020, https://www.awin.com/ie/affiliate-marketing/TikTok-The-Worlds-Fastest-Growing-Social-Media-Network
“It Starts on TikTok | Good Vibes.” YouTube, YouTube, 8 Oct. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0ig5UeXczA. 
Thurlow, Crispin & Jaworski, Adam. (2011). Banal Globalization? Embodied Actions and Mediated Practices in Tourists’ Online Photo Sharing. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199795437.003.0011.