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Research Note: Spreading Hate on TikTok
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2020
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Social Medium MonitoringEmerging MediaCommunication Social ChangeSocial TechnologiesCommunicationMedia StudiesCensorshipSocial MediaMedia ActivismManagementContent AnalysisHate SpeechMedia ContentUser-generated ContentTiktok VideosDigital MediaPopular CommunicationSocial Media PlatformsResearch NoteMedia PoliciesSocial ComputingPolitical CampaignsYoung ChildrenMass CommunicationArtsSocial Medium Data
TikTok, the fastest‑growing social media platform with 1.5 billion active users—mostly children and teenagers—has become a new venue for far‑right extremist content, a trend that has been largely overlooked while other platforms have been scrutinized, and its youth‑centric, nascent nature makes it especially vulnerable despite its Terms of Service prohibiting harmful content. This study aims to identify the presence of far‑right content on TikTok through a descriptive, systematic content analysis of videos posted in early 2020. The authors performed a systematic content analysis of TikTok videos from early 2020 to catalog extremist symbols, commentary, and imagery. The analysis revealed a disturbing prevalence of far‑right extremism in TikTok videos, with unique platform features exacerbating the problem.
TikTok is the fastest-growing application today, attracting a huge audience of 1.5 billion active users, mostly children and teenagers. Recently, the growing presence of extremist’s groups on social media platforms became more prominent and massive. Yet, while most of the scholarly attention focused on leading platforms like Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, the extremist immigration to other platforms like TikTok went unnoticed. This study is a first attempt to find the Far-right’s use of TikTok: it is a descriptive analysis based on a systematic content analysis of TikTok videos, posted in early 2020. Our findings reveal the disturbing presence of Far-right extremism in videos, commentary, symbols and pictures included in TikTok’s postings. While similar concerns were with regard to other social platforms, TikTok has unique features to make it more troublesome. First, unlike all other social media TikTok’ s users are almost all young children, who are more naïve and gullible when it comes to malicious contents. Second, TikTok is the youngest platform thus severely lagging behind its rivals, who have had more time to grapple with how to protect their users from disturbing and harmful contents. Yet, TikTok should have learned from these other platforms’ experiences and apply TikTok’s own Terms of Service that does not allow postings that are deliberately designed to provoke or antagonize people, or are intended to harass, harm, hurt, scare, distress, embarrass or upset people or include threats of physical violence.