Disinformation and Sexism on TikTok: #Sigma and the Manufacture of Toxic Communication

• In Event: Online Extremism and Hate Speech

Abstract

TikTok is the most popular social media platform in recent years. It differs from other social media platforms by the challenges, dances and lip-syncing initiated by its users, which comes with great potential for attraction and imitation and puts users at greater risk of unintentionally encountering disturbing content. This presentation will analyze how masculinist discourses promoting antifeminist narratives and masculine cultural dominance are shaping, spreading, and appropriated by users on TikTok, focusing on a specific movement: sigma male. To do so, and based on a digital qualitative method of observation by "immersion" in the TikTok environment, we proceed to the collection and content analysis of videos, hashtags, and accounts, related to masculinist content. Also, we adopt a socio-technical approach, whereby the promotion of masculinist discourses and anti-women hate, are envisaged as a mediation between technology and humans. If most of the studies focus on extremist forms of masculinism, such as incels, we concentrate here on content that gradually shapes toxic communication that leads young audiences to extremist discourse against women. These results seem to preoccupy considering how widespread TikTok use is in the population, mostly teens, and the risk they face while being exposed to “gendered and sexist disinformation”.

Authors

• Samuel Tanner, Université de Montréal

• Francois Gillardin, Université de Montréal