How can we use mobile media to engage audiences and publics in alternative and playful ways?
There is a variety of methods to engage audiences and publics in alternative and playful ways. Tik Tok has been a pivotal moment within social media that displays engaging videos through entertainment, education and more. It’s ability to turn any video viral through its ‘content graph’ (Stokel-Walker, 2021) algorithm, which looks at what you’ve previously engaged with, leverages its popularity. Tik Tok has developed an abundance of ways to continue to engage its audience and the public to using the app. One of these ways involves the genres that has been user generated within the app. From dancing videos, makeup videos, cute and funny animal videos to influencing and imitation videos. Genres help diversify the app and assist users to specifically participate to the medium of their choice. The question is, how can genres (short term, hashtags) be used to engage its audience and public?
Tik Tok is a driving force of civic participation, which is the extended involvement of individuals through mobile media. In Glas, René, et al., article, The Playful Citizen, they highlighted Bennet, Wells and Freelon’s description of ‘acualizing citizenship’, which states the rise of actions using mobile media ‘that draw attention to self-expression, emotional involvement, and intrinsic motivation’. Through these different genres, which are categorised by hashtags, Tik Tok is able to encourage its users to engage in the app in alternate ways.
One genre that is well known by its users is the dancing trends. Dancing trends are a key factor to what engages Tik Tok uses and also allows its audience and publics to navigate the app in a playful way. You can find videos of people dancing in their bedrooms, in the city or in the middle of a busy footpath all over the world. Through normalising these trends encourages it’s user to feel more comfortable being in the public eye.
Hashtags also play a pivotal role within movements, also known for as hashtag activism. These could be informal, educational, political and more. Through hashtag activism, hashtags act as a call out for others to share their stories and perspective. These hashtags could actively be seen during the MeToo movement, Blacklivesmatter and pride. I believe this use of hashtagging falls under a genre of politics which ultimately encourages the users of Tik Tok to engage with the specific movements.
Hashtags are an essential affordance inbuilt in the app. Users can use them as a sort of navigation, and also caption their own videos with these hashtags. Hashtags can be used to categorise your video into a certain trend, this could be #anime or # cats. Another use for hashtags includes the purpose of using them to land the user into the trend. Using #cats as a reference, it was evidently clear that what I would find on the app would be in fact, cats. This simple affordance of hashtagging leads its users to the specific genre of choice. Alex Zhu, the co-founder to the app, describes posting to Tik Tok as ‘building a community’. This reflects the way in which the app creates its own target audiences and invites the extended public to join the community, whether that be dancing, applying makeup, fashion styling etc. Individuals are able to engage in the app in playful ways through posting, commenting and sharing videos to the greater public. With the ability to share videos, invites others to post their own perspective, therefore extending its engagement.
The genres of Tik Tok not only assist in navigating the algorithm but encourage users to post their own versions. This phenomenon that Tik Tok has created has allowed its now 689 million users to participate and self express themselves through 5/15/60 second videos. The sense of trends and belonging to a community that is navigated through genres, adds to the appeal of wanting to participate with the app.
With this knowledge, I believe that genres of Tik Tok #engage it’s users in alternate and playful ways.
Glas, René, et al., editors. (2019), The Playful Citizen: Civic Engagement in a Mediatized Culture. Amsterdam University Press, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvcmxpds.
Stockel-Walker, C., (2021), TikTok Boom: China’s Dynamite App and the Superpower Race for Social Media, Canbury Press
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