Tik Tok has been proven to contribute to a prejudiced output of media, affecting users and their understanding of the world. As a member of an active audience on social media, I respond and interpret media in different ways and am capable of challenging and questioning the content that I am faced with. Since 2018 I have been a part of the community on social media app Tik Tok. Although this app is for entertainment purposes, it’s also my source of news and politics. Despite this though, its ‘For You’ page and algorithm has allowed me to recognise that what I am viewing is biased, and tailored to my personality and political stance, thus providing me with a one sided conversation about the society we live in.
Tik Tok is owned by a Chinese company, called Bytedance and was released in 2016 as a resurgence of Vine and Musical.ly. It gained popularity around the world because of its accurate algorithm, determining a user’s feed. In Tik Tok’s 2020 blog post (Tik Tok, 2020), they share what factors make up a user’s ‘algorithm’ which determines the content that they see: shares, likes, sounds, hashtags, accounts they follow and comments posted. This algorithm is the reason that media bias stems from this platform and in some circumstances, it influences the media itself.
https://www.tiktok.com/@glossyzen/video/6835877701920836870?lang=en&is_copy_url=0&is_from_webapp=v2&sender_device=pc&sender_web_id=6940180011383293442
Despite Tik Tok’s aversion to having political content on their app, in recent years the content on social media has been getting more political, with people voicing their opinions on Brexit, presidential elections, and protests for climate change and Black Lives Matter (BLM). Social media such as Tik Tok is often blamed for increasing political polarization by preventing people from being exposed to information that opposes their beliefs and values (Bail, 2018). This is reflected in my understanding of Tik Tok’s ‘For You’ page as my media is controlled, presenting one-sided, left-wing information and politics, mirroring my interests. During the American presidential election, my ‘For You’ page was flooded with ‘Vote for Biden’ videos, and others which defaced Donald Trump’s campaign. Similarly in Australia, I am presented with videos mocking Prime Minister Morrison and his handling of the equality protests in 2021, while others received the opposite or no political content at all.
Additionally, Tik Tok and its subjective ‘For You’ page is shaping politics and furthermore the media. John Herrman of the NY times explores how Tik Tok was “instrumental in the organisation of a mass false-registration drive ahead of a Trump rally in Tulsa”(Herrman, 2020), resulting in a stadium of unfilled seats. Similarly, it called for protests in Washington regarding BLM, promoting awareness about police brutality in America.
https://twitter.com/kellyoxford/status/1274520487620571136?s=20
These examples illustrate how Bytedance’s Tik Tok not only controls the output of individually posted, prejudiced and untrustworthy media, but it also influences the news and events in the world. Although the media presented by Tik Tok shouldn’t be dependable as it doesn’t represent the full truth, Rebecca Jennings explores how it’s constructive as a media source, allowing the youth to engage in the news, compared to “lengthy, informative articles …(which) we can’t relate to in the slightest.”(Jennings 2020) Despite Tik Tok positively allowing the youth to participate in a world-wide conversation, the question at large is are they able to individually challenge and criticise the media they consume?
