Abstract: 

TikTok is a very famous platform nowadays which plays an important role in our daily life. It counts millions of users and that is because it is very user-friendly and accessible. As usual with every social media platform gaining interest, there are online communities which tend to rise on those said platforms and this is the case with TikTok. The topic that will be discussed is the cultural awareness that is happening now in TikTok. To better understand the matter, TikTok’s dynamics will be observed and discussed forward and how these factors are useful for the spread of awareness. The way content is being consumed, produced and shared is one aspect that is going to demonstrate why this cultural awareness is made possible on the platform. The different impacts which are caused by the spread of such content will also be determined and supported with arguments. Moreover, this topic does not have only good sides; TikTok also has its drawbacks as all the social media platforms nowadays. 

Introduction: 

With the advent of Web 2.0, more and more social platforms were seen to make their appearance. Among all the well-known platforms existing, TikTok started to gain interest and evolve as a platform. TikTok is a short video focused social networking service. In the year 2020, there were 700 million users present on this platform. The app allows people to browse through a wide selection of videos and can also make videos on the platform. From satire videos to political videos, everything can be found on TikTok. TikTok has the same concepts as various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter; Hashtags, news feed but here it consists of videos. With the same model as those platforms, TikTok has also brought about on its network a wide number of social Influencers with all type of topics and themes.  An influencer on TikTok is a user who creates content and while doing has a wider range and reach for his or her ideology. (Brooks et al.,2021) With this humongous media content on TikTok it helped in building online communities on the platform. The fact that TikTok also allows users to express themselves freely without barriers made it more interesting for the users to interact with their influencers. Among all the present topics, one of the most interesting is the cultural awareness and cultural exchange present on the platform. Many content creators use this platform to make the world know about their culture and share different aspects of their tradition or customs. It varies from the way they dress, eat, dance and even party. TikTok can be viewed as a tool which is being used by numerous influencers to raise cultural awareness; the features provided by TikTok to better reach out on the platform are what makes it more suitable for raising awareness. 

How is TikTok contributing to raising cultural awareness on its platform? 

It is a fact that with new technologies such as Web 2.0, the social media awareness factor is surely increasing. More and more people are connected to at least one social media platform and using it once in a while. (Hampton,2016) The rush towards social media is understandable as for one to be aware of what is happening around the world, one needs to be “connected”. As previously mentioned above, TikTok actively counts 700 million users and has been downloaded at least 3.3 billion times as recorded in 2019. This shows how much of an audience there is on this platform. With this number of users, bringing awareness on a topic is not a great challenge if properly done within the respected guidelines of the platform. The first thing that TikTok does that helps in reaching people about cultural awareness is a concept used around many social media networks and platforms; algorithm. An algorithm works in such a way that information about what type of content a user consumes will always be used to offer the said users more content that would be interesting. (Lee,2015) The number of content creators also is how raising awareness is doable on this platform. If there are 10 content creators talking about a culture, with the algorithm and for you page on TikTok, there is more chance that the message of awareness will be seen by a larger number of users. 

 In addition to that, the use of hashtags also contributes to helping to raise awareness. Hashtags such as #NativeTiktok, #cultural, #culturalappropriation, #indegenioustok and much more. These hashtags help categorize the videos with the same type of content which then helps users to navigate around thousands of videos. Thus, hashtags are a way for users to easily find themselves in the community they belong to. The use of these hashtags is important because the algorithm built by TikTok is such that if a hashtag is being more and more seen and becoming famous, TikTok will automatically put videos with the same hashtags on many users for you page which is TikTok’s news feed. Another factor brought up by TikTok which helps to reach more people is the Duet option. A Duet is made when a user wants to react or to add up to a video already present on TikTok. The video will then be available on the platform and will find itself on the for you of any concerned person. This concept is called prosumer. A prosumer is an individual, in this case a user, who both consumers and produces. (Reed,2014) The prosumer concept helps to enlarge the reach of a video on TikTok. All these factors combined together is how TikTok contributes to cultural influencers present on its platform.  

The impact of having cultural content made to raise awareness and educate on the platform. 

The impact of all those factors combined surely help in raising awareness on the TikTok platform. Raising awareness around other cultures has been here for ages but this phenomenon happening online is more interesting to observe as it makes people who were once marginalized have a voice on their own. Certain TikTok content creators such as “NotoriousCree” is one example; this user is a Native American and speaks about various traditions and cultures natives used to practice and are now banned by law. Even though these people are Native of the continent and through TikTok this user has been able to make the population hear about what his message is about. This is one example among numerous. This cultural awareness concept also helps people to discover and know more about unknown cultures and traditions to them. The increased use of the net by the world has broken down barriers which now enables communication to happen on another level between communities. (Welzner,2011) Breaking down of stereotypes was also an impact of the cultural awareness brought by these content creators. Dissipating stereotypes is one thing but educating others about the topic is as important and this is also what those creators do on the platform. With all these factors, users can build up or reconnect with their online cultural identity. Having a cultural identity is important and mainly for the youth to reconnect to their roots. (Friedman,1994)  

As mentioned previously, Web 2.0 has shaped many dynamics in this current society and eventually it has helped in building online virtual communities. (Delanty,2018) Furthermore this trend has been applied to TikTok too; many online communities which share for theme cultural awareness and appreciation are present on the platform due to the reasons listed. Another interesting impact is that it gives the people who are far away from their native country a way to keep in touch with their community and reconnect with it. TikTok can be perceived as an educational tool that not only educates people on different cultures but also brings together communities around culture online. As mentioned above TikTok has millions of users; having many users helps enlarging a community’s diversity. It gives people of a community the chance to interact with others belonging to the same community but from different regions around the world but also different age groups and nationalities. These users can then share and express their opinions in such a way that the community will only benefit from this as information and experiences from various backgrounds are being shared. Another impact is that since there is diversity in the communities, it will be easier for new users to relate to the community and by doing so eventually the community grows bigger.  

The downside of TikTok being a medium to raise cultural awareness. 

One of the inconveniences that occurs with the spread of information about a topic is false information.  Misinformation occurs on all social media platforms present nowadays. This circumstance has been observed with the recent global pandemic caused by the COVID-19. (Cinelli et al.,2020) The phenomenon of misinformation occurs also on TikTok and surely it happens to the various cultural awareness communities around the platform. When dealing with social media platforms, misinformation is a factor that cannot be overlooked as it has serious consequences which will directly affect the community. Certain people will have fake profiles created in order to spread inaccurate information just to cause a nuisance to a certain community. These actions will have collateral damage to the users trying to learn about cultures through TikTok and thus fake information will be spread. It is also to be noted that social media platforms are subject to a lot of hate among the users and mainly TikTok; the fact that it counts millions of users doesn’t help at all. (Gabriel et al.,2020) Research has demonstrated that TikTok too has a dark side which was inevitable just as every other social media platform. The dark side of TikTok counts problems such as extremist groups, pedophile and terrorists. (Gabriel et al.,2020)  

Nevertheless, the problem here is not the way cultural awareness is, but rather the platform which it is being done on. Social media and hate are other aspects which may cause harm to a healthy and safe platform and turn it into a toxic place. The hate on social media is present everywhere on TikTok; this means that it is not just the communities around cultural awareness but also all the communities on the platform. The hate generated could be explained through various socio-political contexts or sometimes even just plain racism. Hate on social media is a phenomenon which has always been present; it has been done mainly by fake profiles which tends to find pleasure in spreading hate on the platform. Apart from pleasure, hate on social media ca also be viewed as a way for haters to tarnish a community’s reputation or credibility. (Banaji et al.,2021) The hate culture, negative feedbacks, satire content and misinformation are the factors that affect the cultural awareness communities on TikTok. Surely there are countermeasures for all these factors which TikTok tries to cope with; by implementing community guidelines frequently.   

Conclusion: 

With all that research done on the matter, TikTok is a very good social media platform on which to build up a community. The cultural awareness movement suits the dynamics of TikTok and with the different features available on the platform, it is very attainable to reach a large audience. The various influencers and users present doing the work of raising awareness for their cultures is a very interesting thing to observe. This shows how the transition bis being made; long ago cultures were transmitted through talks with elders but now this has shifted to a more technologically friendly approach. This way a larger number of people can feel socially included. The few drawbacks of the platform are outweighed by its usefulness. TikTok has grown rapidly and is now one of the most visited platforms on the net. The way people make use of it sure is the way to go. Online Communities on TikTok are slowly growing day by day and it will be interesting to see their progression. 

REFERENCE LIST 

Banaji, S., & Bhat, R. (2021). Social Media and Hate (1st ed.). Routledge.  

https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003083078 

Cinelli, M., Quattrociocchi, W., Galeazzi, A., Valensise, C. M., Brugnoli, E., Schmidt, A.  

L., Zola, P., Zollo, F., & Scala, A. (2020). The COVID-19 social media infodemic. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 16598. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-73510-5 

Delanty, G. (2018). Community: 3rd edition (3rd ed.). Routledge.  

https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315158259 

Friedman, J. (1994). Cultural identity and global process. SAGE Publications.  

https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/curtin/reader.action?docID=1023937&ppg=87  

Gabriel Weimann & Natalie Masri (2020) Research Note: Spreading Hate on TikTok,  

Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, DOI: 10.1080/1057610X.2020.1780027 

Gillian Brooks, Jenna Drenten & Mikolaj Jan Piskorski (2021) Influencer  

Celebrification: How Social Media Influencers Acquire Celebrity Capital, Journal of Advertising, 50:5, 528-547, DOI: 10.1080/00913367.2021.1977737 

Hampton, K. N. (2016). Persistent and Pervasive Community: New Communication  

Technologies and the Future of Community. American Behavioral Scientist, 60(1), 101–124. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764215601714  

Lee, J., Oh, J.C. (2015). A Node-Centric Reputation Computation Algorithm on Online  

Social Networks. In: Kazienko, P., Chawla, N. (eds) Applications of Social Media and Social Network Analysis. Lecture Notes in Social Networks. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19003-7_1 

Reed, T. V. (2014). Digitized lives : Culture, power, and social change in the internet era. Taylor & Francis Group. 

Tatjana Welzer, Marko Hölbl, Marjan Družovec, and Boštjan Brumen. 2011. Cultural  

awareness in social media. In Proceedings of the 2011 international workshop on DETecting and Exploiting Cultural diversiTy on the social web (DETECT ’11). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 3–8. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2064448.2064463