The social media app TikTok, owned by the Chinese Company ByteDance, has become a worldwide success with over one billion monthly active users due to an algorithm that enables users to consume individually tailored content. However, it was also part of pol itical confrontations between countries like the USA and China due to allegedly security risks. Moreover, the app could be classified as a persuasive technology with potential on Students in Sweden with quantitati ethical and privacy concerns . A case study ve and qualitative research methods was conducted to understand user behavior and the app's impact on users. The former was a survey with 36 participants, and the latter interviews with 6 participants. The case study results indicate, among other things, t hat the participants consume content beyond entertainment, evaluate the algorithm as accurate, do not unambiguously experience a filter bubble, and asses the app as addictive. Despite ethical and privacy concerns, the app has potential for different use ca ses, such as marketing or education. / Den social media appen TikTok, som ägs av det kinesiska företaget ByteDance, har blivit en världssuccé med över en miljard aktiva användare varje månad tack vare en algoritm som gör det möjligt för användarna att konsumera individuellt anpassat innehåll. D en har dock också varit en del av politiska konfrontationer mellan länder som USA och Kina på grund av påstådda säkerhetsrisker. Appen kan klassificeras som en övertalningsteknik med dess potentiella etiska och integritetsrelaterade problem. För att förstå användarnas beteende och appens inverkan på användarna genomfördes en fallstudie om studenter i Sverige med både kvantitativa och kvalitativa forskningsmetoder. Den förstnämnda var en enkät med 36 deltagare och den sistnämnda intervjuer med 6 deltagare. F allstudiens resultat visar bland annat att deltagarna konsumerar innehåll utöver underhållning, bedömer algoritmen som korrekt, upplever inte entydigt ett filter bubble och bedömer appen som beroendeframkallande. Appen har trots etiska och integritetsrelaterade problem, potential för olika användningsområden, t.ex. marknadsföring eller utbildning.

Background: With the emergence of new social platforms, nascent strategies of Viral Marketing utilizing User-generated Content has developed. TikTok is a new social media based on User-generated videos, where content is mainly expressed in the form of #challenges. Given its nascent nature, marketers lack clear directives of how to capitalize on #challenges by engaging the user base, in their pursuit of reaching virality. As the underlying motivations behind the participation of #challenges are unknown, further research is required. Purpose: The purpose of this study is therefore to explore what motivates Gen Z users to participate in #challenges on TikTok and how companies can utilize these motivations to structure their own #challenges’ in marketing campaigns.   Method: This is an exploratory qualitative study inspired by grounded theory where sixteen semi-structured, in-depth interviews were held with participants classified as Gen Z. Qualitative content analysis was used to develop a revised model of Uses and Gratification Theory.   Conclusion: The results suggests that the Uses and Gratification theory could be used in explaining the underlying motivation for participating in #challenges on TikTok. By drawing connections between Uses and Gratification Theory and empirical data, a revised model was found to include the six traditional forms of motivations with structure as an added seventh prevalent motivation on TikTok. The results propose the motivators factors to participate in a challenge to be intertwined but suggest Entertainment to be a superseding motivator. Suggestions of elements that marketers could implement in their campaigns were thereafter derived.

This essay aims to study the relationship between cosplay content creators and TikTok’s algorithm. To study this relationship the essay will conduct a qualitative semi-structured interviews with creators from the cosplay community on TikTok. Since the rise of digital plattforms the media and the role of producer as well as consumer has changed drastically. TikTok has been growing rapidly in popularity since its entry on the market, and by 2020 it had 500 million active users. Since many of today's digital platforms have consumer produced content, the consumer of today has taken on a mixed role between consuming and creating content, which creates a new relationship. The content consumers produce vary vastly on TikTok but one kind that has been present in much of TikTok’s existence is cosplay content. Cosplayers are creators who design costumes to already established characters or franchises. Since a discourse has started in the cosplay community on TikTok about the algorithm suppressing their content the study found it to be a good way to start examining content creators as individuals and how they behave towards an algorithm in their content creation process. The study aims to use algorithmic “folk” theory to examine what theories have been created in the community and how the theories affect the creators. The study also applies gatekeeping theory and social cognitive theory (SCT) to paint a clearer picture in how these creators view the algorithm. Seven interviews with cosplay content creators were conducted and with the help of a thematic analysis method the study found several themes in how the creators view and behave in relation to TikTok and its algorithm. The results of our study shows that there’s a definite present of “folk” theories created inside of the community. The most distinct behaviour relating to “folk” theory among the creators was that they can’t use the hashtag cosplay in the belief that the algorithm would suppress the content. This study concludes that the creators are more aware of the algorithm then they themself know and have different ways of working with and around it.

In 2018 the app TikTok was bought by the Chinese technology company ByteDance. Two years later the app had over 800 million users across the world, with over 100 million of them living in America. In 2020 a conflict emerged between America and China when the U.S. government started accusing the app of collecting American user data and sharing it with the Chinese Communist Party. The purpose of our study is to examine how the U.S. and China are framed in articles about TikTok in the American newspaper The New York Times and the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. In our study we examine a total of 20 articles between the 1 August 2020 and the 1 October 2020. We chose 10 news- or debate articles from each newspaper to analyse.    Our study is implemented through a qualitative case study and a thematic analysis. The case in our study is the debate around TikTok, which is a small part of the larger conflict that has been going on between the U.S. and China for several years. Our study is based on two theories. The first theory we used in our study is the framing theory and the second theory is the othering theory which is derived from the post colonial theory.  Through examining the articles in our study we draw the conclusion that the U.S. is described as the “Self” whilst China is often described as the “Other”. This is framed by showing how the U.S. and its userdata needed to be protected from China and the Chinese government. Throughout our analysis of the newspapers, China is framed as an enemy and a threat to the U.S. national security. In turn the U.S. is framed by being on top of the hierarchy between the countries and as though against China.

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This study examines how news organizations activity on TikTok can support children’s news consumption, using Lara Schreurs and Laura Vandenbosch’s theory of social media literacy and Birgitta Höijer’s socio-cognitive reception theory. Through focus group interviews with nine participants, aged 10 to 11, the study explores news consumption by first looking at the social media literacy of children and then examining how children interpret the accounts of Lilla Aktuellt and Juniornyheterna.  Previous research shows that news organizations need to adapt to digital environments, such as social media platforms, in order to keep their audiences while the range of channels continuously grows. The way children use their critical skills when being faced with news online can affect their opportunities to become informed citizens. In order to avoid risks in these environments, children tend to depend on how relevant people, such as parents, teachers or peers, mediate their use.  The main result of this study is that the social media literacy of children aged 10 to 11 is insufficient since their use of TikTok is based on affective reactions and socially constructed preferences. They experience issues with using their critical knowledge in the digital environment in an independent way. They cannot identify what accounts on TikTok that are credible sources of news without previous mediation or experience. News organizations must therefore mediate their credibility through several spheres of children’s lives in order to support them in becoming empowered news consumers on TikTok.

Since 1990, the usage of emojis has increased and become a part of our everyday communication.The ambiguous nature of emojis has been shown by multiple previous studiesbut there is a qualitative gap in research of what the meaning of these emojis are. On thesocial media app TikTok emojis, in combination with written text, are used by users of theapp to communicate with each other, and the content creators, via the comment sectionof videos. This study researches in which laughable context specific emojis, representinglaughter, appeared. Laughter has always been a part of human communication and was previously referredto as being a way of showing agreement. Laughter was a way to give a preferred answer toa humorous situation. Later research has expanded this claim to other dimensions wherelaughter is not only a response to humor, but also a way of making dispreferred answersagreeable. Laughter is a way of affiliation and is a quick way to establish a relationshipwith another person. This study collected thirteen examples from the comment section on the digital app,TikTok. All examples were related to laughter and contained at least one emoji. To beselected as an example, the original comment also needed a direct response. All exampleswere analysed with multimodal interaction analysis. When preforming the analysis, thefocus was recipient design, preference, common ground and affiliation. In line with previous studies, the results confirm the ambiguous nature of emojis butalso that laughter can be represented in many different ways. One meaning found wasgenuine, hysterical laughter which was represented by both face with tears of joy emojiand rolling on the floor laughing emoji. Another meaning found was the embarrassinglaughter context where the comment creator is looking for someone to relate to the loudlycrying emoji and the grinning face with tear of sweat emoji were present. The skull emojiwas used in context where the laughter was some what hysterical and the context wasfunny, but there was serious truth behind the laugh. The amount of emojis used makes adifference in meaning but also how the text that the emojis are related to in the comment isexpressed. This study contributes to the field of internet linguistics and conversation analysis andcould hopefully give more insight to the digital communication of today.

This critical study examines how TikTok content from body positive trends may influence power relations and reinforce female body negative discourses. The study takes its departure primarily in Michel Foucault. However, additional researchers were brought in to expand on Foucault’s ideas by e.g., introducing gender to Foucauldian theory. 30 TikTok videos belonging to two different body positive trends have been collected and undergone a Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis according to Foucauldian principals. Findings from the analysis illustrated how users acknowledged and heavily depended on societal body negative discourses to create body positive content. More specifically, this was illustrated when users self-categorised as plus size and pointed out body parts e.g., stomach rolls, that are seen as less desirable in society. Users furthermore directly engaged in behaviour, which was found to be body negative e.g., implying the existence of abnormal and imperfect bodies. Effectively, this behaviour was identified as performative and rooted in a fear of being seen as non-progressive and body negativeThe conclusive results of this thesis thus suggest that users inevitably produce and reproduce body negative discourses by relying heavily on the very same discourses in their TikTok communication. Essentially, the users are then contributing to the social and feminist problem of weight-based discrimination and marginalisation.

This thesis investigates the role of so called sustainable influencers in the communication of sustainable skincare on TikTok. Several videos are analysed using MCDA as a method and enriching the analysis with interviews performed to the influencers whose videos have been object of examination. During a preliminary research several elements have been taken in account, such as the uniqueness of TikTok in its communication tools and features compared to other social media. Since sustainable skincare is a growing topic of conversation online, this thesis explores how sustainable influencers shape the discourse on sustainability related to skincare on TikTok. The collected sample has been selected after applying several criteria, one fundamental one being that the influencers who produced the videos didn’t have to be sponsored, collaborating or paid by any brand in those videos. Surprisingly, out of a hundred retrived videos, only eight respected the criteria imposed, showing from the start of the analysis a deep consumeristic and capitalistic ideology moving these influencers even when not sponsored by any brand. This work is believed to be useful to open the conversation about online communication and consumerism within sustainability.

Persuasive Technology(PT) was pioneered by BJ Fogg. The theory has been developed in several aspects and applied in education, health, entertainment, and online shopping. Short-form video application TikTok first launched in the media market in 2016. During the global COVID-19 pandemic period, the growing popularity of TikTok helped it reach over 800 million users. As the new form of social media, it is persuasively shaping people’s life. The paper aims to investigate the relationship between behavior change and TikTok usage. Quantitative and qualitative research methods were used to investigate 178 participants. The research mainly focused on Chinese university students whose ages are around 18 to 25 as the target group. The result shows that 57.3% of participants feel the behavior change and 15.7% of them are not sure about that. In the qualitative research, from the in-depth interview, participants who are not sure about the effect also make using TikTok a habit without perception. The findings of this paper provide evidence that TikTok as a persuasive system has effects on users’ behavior and even changed their attitudes. The ethical concerns and sustainability are also discussed in the following parts. / Persuasive Technology(PT) var banbrytande av BJ Fogg. Teorin har utvecklats i flera aspekter och tillämpats inom utbildning, hälsa, underhållning och online shopping. Kortformad videoapplikation TikTok lanserades först på mediemarknaden 2016. Under den globala covid-19-pandemiperioden hjälpte TikToks växande popularitet det att nå över 800 miljoner användare. Som den nya formen av sociala medier formar det på ett övertygande sätt människors liv. Uppsatsen syftar till att undersöka sambandet mellan beteendeförändring och TikTok-användning. Kvantitativa och kvalitativa forskningsmetoder användes för att undersöka 178 deltagare. Forskningen fokuserade främst på kinesiska universitetsstudenter vars ålder är runt 18 till 25 som målgrupp. Resultatet visar att 57,3 % av deltagarna känner att beteendet förändras och 15,7 % av dem är inte säkra på det. I den kvalitativa forskningen, från djupintervjun, gör deltagare som inte är säkra på effekten också att använda TikTok till en vana utan uppfattning. Resultaten av detta dokument ger bevis på att TikTok som ett övertygande system har effekter på användarnas beteende och till och med förändrat deras attityder. De etiska aspekterna och hållbarhet diskuteras också i följande delar.