Knowledge, perspectives and crisis - Tiktok as an arena for communication

The project will contribute to an increased understanding about how the social media app TikTok supports and constrains the worldviews of young people. Using both rhetorical and ethnographic methods, the purpose is to investigate how TikTok affords the creation of knowledge about the world for its young users. The project therefore has ramifications for how society’s official actors (e.g., government authorities) are able to reach out to, and create communication strategies for, a hitherto difficult target group. Also of importance to this investigation are the opportunities the app creates for vulnerable people to be exploited and for one-sided narratives to be established, often with negative social consequences.