Assembling “Sides” of TikTok: Examining Community, Culture, and Interface through a BookTok Case Study

Abstract

The term “side” has emerged to describe communities on the short-form video app TikTok. But what discursive work does the metaphor of side do to describe online communities? Through a case study with a textual analysis of the culture, technology, interface, and platform vernaculars present in reading fandom TikTok, BookTok, we explore how user practice and app features intertwine to establish sides of TikTok as relational, individualistically positioned, and exclusionary. In the process, we also present a cursory charting of the BookTok community. Unpacking the construction and implications of this metaphor matters because it shows the distinctive and exclusionary work done by the term side, not just across TikTok but within collectives as well. Who TikTok believes to be the typical member of a side has implications for discrimination and exclusion on the app, as it feeds into existing divisiveness in communities and the app’s tendency to suppress people of color, LGBTQ individuals, and disabled individuals.

Us, Them, Right, Wrong: How TikTok's Green Screen, Duet, and Stitch help shape political discourse

“…But, as Christin (2020) noted, qualitative researchers should not shy away from understanding the ways algorithms and other technological features may impact, subtly or substantially, Internet research processes and corpora. Similarly, Maddox and Gill (2023) noted a benefit of creating a new TikTok account in the research process is gleaning insights into who the app believes the new user to be (see also Brock, 2012). For our study, creating a new TikTok account aligned with our subjective epistemological stance and analyses into how TikTok pushes content to new users.…”