“ ‘It’s not intentional stealing all of the time’: How Influencers Perform Race on TikTok”

• In Event: Disrupting Big Tech: Sociology’s Role in Interrogating AI and Social Media

Abstract

This study examines how prominent influencers on the social media site TikTok view, understand, engage with, and challenge racial and cultural boundaries on the platform. It analyzes how popular content creators cultivate their self-presentations on the platform alongside cautious observation of existing racial divisions between different ethnoracial groups. Moreover, this project asserts that the content these influencers post—and their presentations of themselves online—is inherently a racialized product. To date, much of the literature surrounding the digital display of self focuses on sensationalized inauthentic behavior and overt instances of racial disingenuousness. This study challenges that approach. Based on semi-structured interviews with influencers on TikTok (with audiences ranging from 3,000 to over 1,400,000 followers), I present two key findings. First, the data shows that influencers of color uniquely reckon with context-dependent decisions to highlight or hide their racial identities in order to maintain their followings. Second, testimony from these same influencers focuses on protective self-sanitization on the platform. Specifically, non-white influencers report deliberately hiding their authentic selves in order to self-insulate from harm from TikTok’s users and from threats of demonetization from the platform, itself. Results reveal that influencers on the platform are both creator and commodity, creating the novel opportunity to acknowledge the inextricable relationship between racial performance and the monetization of posted content.

Author

• Lauren Michelle Harvey, Duke University