Today I’m joined by Andreas Schellewald to talk about Tiktok. Andreas is a doctoral researcher looking into communicative forms on Tiktok and perspectives from digital ethnography, meaning he's taking a look into the categories of content created and how the memes, audios, trends, etc become a way for people to communicate. 

Tiktok has the ability to connect a large amount of people and create social ties through a shared engagement with communicative forms and Andreas takes us through his method and main takeaways from his research. This academic insight into Tiktok was super interesting and also led us to discuss the algorithm.

Tiktok's impressive algorithm is important for both users and creators. Users, mostly engaging with the 'for you page', can see their content page personalised based on their interactions and engagement with certain themes. And on the flip side, content creators who can understand what users enjoy and how to optimise the algorithm can build followings and careers on the popular app. 

As apps, like Instagram, move to prioritise short form video content, becoming skilled at social media is becoming increasingly beneficial, if not essential, to groups like activists who need the awareness and public support for their campaigns and so this interview was an interesting look into Tiktok from an academic perspective. 

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Links to Andreas:

https://andreasschellewald.com/

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/30350/

(Music by Wataboi: U Said It - https://soundcloud.com/wataboi/u-said-it-soundcloud)