TACTik: The Transformation and Consequences of News on TikTok
Short description
The rise of TikTok journalism has raised critical questions: How do journalists adapt to stay relevant to younger audiences? How are far-right alternative media and influencers reshaping the news landscape? Does platform journalism alter perceptions of news credibility? More broadly, how does TikTok change both the production and consumption of news, and does this shift affect how we value information? The TACTik project aims to address these questions by investigating the complex consequences of TikTok journalism and by examining its production, news narration strategies, and audience expectations.
The TACTik project studies the entire lifecycle of news on TikTok– from its creative production and reporting strategies to its impact on young adults’ news interpretation and journalists’ self-perception. Using a mixed-methods approach, the project combines:
- Ethnographic studies on TikTok journalists’ creative practices and self-perception,
- Computational analysis of large-scale TikTok video data to identify news storytelling strategies and their relation to truth claims, and
- Biometric analysis with interviews to explore young adults’ perceptions of TikTok news.
TACTik collaborates with the German Funk Initiative and Fojo Media Institute, and conducts large-scale, semi-automated narrative analysis of social media news videos. With the novel methodological approach, the project establishes a new research agenda, deepening our understanding of how news evolves and how information flows in an increasingly diverse media landscape— an essential factor in safeguarding democratic processes.
Principle Investigator: Chiao-I Tseng, University of Gothenburg
Co-Investigator: Beate Schirrmacher, Linnaeus University
Co-Investigator: Kristoffer Holt, Linnaeus University
Co-Investigator: Katja Schupp, University of Mainz