Call for Chapter Abstracts
Unexpectedly Viral: Ethnographic Explorations of TikTok.
Editors: Elena Liber (UCL) & Yathukulan Yogarajah (Goldsmiths)
Key words: TikTok; Digital Anthropology; Collaborative Methods; Social Media; Digital Storytelling
The Covid-19 pandemic precipitated a huge explosion in the number of people using the social media, micro-vlogging platform TikTok. It has 1 billion active users, 41% of which are between the ages of 16 – 24. Videos shown are curated by what is often referred to simply as ‘the Algorithm’, a constant source of fascination, and social and theoretical reflection. TikTok has become increasingly important as a medium for many people to unpack diverse issues such as migration, gender, race, sex, climate change, our relationship to nature, colonial history – staples of anthropological discussion. TikTok has been used to organise protests, discuss silenced colonial histories, and disrupt political rallies. Most recently, TikTok has been a key medium of communication and discussion about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the overturning of Roe vs. Wade in the United States. It is a social media platform where seemingly anyone can go unexpectedly viral overnight. Moreover, TikTok provides a complex cultural landscape and moral economy, with its own language, customs, rituals, self-making and kinning strategies. TikTok is ripe for anthropological reflection.
This peer-reviewed volume will explore the many ways in which TikTok is engaged with, theorised, and navigated by those who use it. It will engage with current discussions about how social media platforms are shaped by those who use them (Miller et. al, 2012), ongoing conversations about the role of algorithms in shaping everyday life (Amoor and Piotukh, 2016; Noble, 2018), digital narration and life storying, questions of the self (Boellstorff, 2008), as well as conversations about digital methodologies. This collection will open new theoretical, methodological, and ethnographic conversations about the many ways we can engage with TikTok ethnographically. In doing so, this timely volume will contribute new innovative methodological perspectives to the study of TikTok and Digital Anthropology more broadly.
We invite chapter proposals (approx. 500 words) addressing the theme of the book to be sent to the editors (e.liber@lse.ac.uk; yyoga001@gold.ac.uk) by October 14, 2022. The proposals should describe the ethnographic context, and theoretical and methodological framework of the planned chapter, along with a short biographical statement. Prospective authors will be informed of decisions by November 4, 2022. The deadline for the first version of article manuscripts is April 4th 2023.
The book proposal will be sent with abstracts to an international academic publisher in December 2022 and the collection of articles will be sent for peer review in Summer 2023.