Through a white lens: Black victimhood, visibility, and whiteness in the Black Lives Matter movement on TikTok

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we explore how highly visible users in the context of #BlackLivesMatter on TikTok shape the narrative around Black victims of police brutality, the understanding of these narratives by others, and the potential consequences of these portrayals for the movement at large. To examine these dimensions, we analysed the 100 most circulated TikTok videos and associated comments depicting victims of police brutality using the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag through multimodal critical discourse analysis. We identified how users attempted to increase visibility of their content, and how this was supported or criticised by commenters depending on the perceived motives of these efforts. Furthermore, we showcased how influencers raised awareness of the movement with little personal effort or risk, sometimes appearing to leverage the movement for self-exposure. Our analysis showed that many of the most liked videos were made by white content creators who, in their videos, seemed to be addressing an imagined white audience. While these efforts portrayed the movement favourably, the content creators remain outsiders who have not themselves been in harm's way of police brutality. While there were exceptions that promoted the perspectives of marginalised communities, and while the white narratives were consistently supportive of the movement, they also work to displace focus on racial (in)justice away from those directly affected by it, that is, away from Black people’s own experiences of police brutality. We discuss these findings in relation to questions about digital representations of Black victimhood, digital visibility and practices of whiteness, on TikTok and beyond.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical victimology
• Social movements studies
• TikTok
• Imagined audiences
• Black Lives Matter

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank dr. Brooke Foucault Welles for her insightful comments on our initial first draft of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 We created a new TikTok account specifically for the data collection to not skew the algorithm by allowing it to learn our personal preferences.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Swedish Crime Victims Authority [grant number 09413/2020].

Notes on contributors

Moa Eriksson Krutrök

Moa Eriksson Krutrök holds a PhD in Sociology from Umeå University, Sweden. Her research interests centre on discourses on trauma and victimisation as communicated through high-profile (social) media events. She is an Associate Professor in Media and Communication Studies at Umeå University [email: [email protected]].

Mathilda Åkerlund

Mathilda Åkerlund holds a PhD in Sociology and is currently working with the Centre for Digital Social Research (DIGSUM) at Umeå University, studying the far-right in Swedish online settings [email: [email protected]].