What is it about?
This research project explored how adults classified as members of Generation Z use TikTok, a widely popular video sharing app, to construct their online identities -- ways of being, acting -- that inform their everyday literacy practices. As a video platform, TikTok promotes a form of self-expression focused on appearances and vocal communications in a relatively brief time period. Specifically, we focus on trends in exaggerated performances of skits calling attention to the arbitrary and constructed nature of gender roles, and confessional-style narrations of personal experiences of sexuality.
Featured Image
Why is it important?
The community of TikTok also seems to shape identity by giving these TikTokers are appreciative audience to perform their gender for, encouraging similar performance and boosting self-esteem. Similar effects seem to be gained from the very act of creating the desired self-image on the platform. For audiences, these performances may destabilize taken for-granted gender norms.
Perspectives
We examine gender through the lens of Judith Butler’s performativity and Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality, and the analytic framework known as automediality to understand how TikTok as a social media platform enables users to shape the way they express their online identities.
Donna Alvermann
University of Georgia
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Creating Gaps in Understanding: How Gen Z Disrupts Gender Norms on TikTok, The International Journal of Critical Media Literacy, December 2021, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/25900110-03030001.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
