Memetic Negotiation: Structure, Agency, and Platform Vernaculars on TikTok and Instagram

• In Event: 40816 - Digital Lives and Social Ties: Examining Identity, Agency, and Influence Online

Abstract

Social media platforms, despite converging technical features, foster distinct cultural environments. This study examines how users navigate and reshape these environments through memetic practices on TikTok and Instagram. Drawing on digital ethnography with five research personas and systematic analysis of memetic content, I introduce "memetic negotiation" to explain how users transform platform constraints into opportunities for creative expression. Findings reveal that users develop platform-specific vernaculars—participatory, performative, and creative—to address key tensions between individual and collective expression, authentic self-presentation and strategic performance, and creative innovation and established convention. These negotiations produce distinct strategies: Networked Individuality, Calibrated Authenticity, and Constrained Creativity, demonstrating that creativity emerges not despite, but through, engagement with platform limitations. This framework offers new insights into cultural production in an era of increasing platform convergence, highlighting how users actively shape platform cultures through collective creative practice.

Author

• Alex Turvy, Tulane University