Freepalestine on TikTok: from performative activism to (meaningful) playful activism

ABSTRACT

Palestinians, like many other diasporic communities, have, on the one hand, articulated their personal experiences and their subjectivities through digitalized channels. On the other, they have used social networks as tools for resistance, to make their voices heard by global public opinion. Acknowledging that each social medium is a unique socio-technological environment, displaying particular affordances that shape its dynamics of communicative practices and social interactions, this paper focuses on TikTok, the most popular social network among Gen Zers, disclosing how the affordances of this platform shape and engender a new form of activism, that we will define “playful activism”. The study presents an inductive, multimodal discourse analysis of a sample of widely viewed and shared #freepalestine TikToks unveiling how young Palestinians use this network to construct their narratives through playful performances, which show a deep knowledge of the app’s affordances and a great capacity to adapt to TikTok`s cultural and discursive environment. However, most importantly, these playful performances allow them to spread their political messages among a youth audience that potentially had no previous interest (and probably not even knowledge) about Palestine, fostering both the humanization of Palestinians and building a new solidarity network.

KEYWORDS:

• TikTok
• Palestine
• social media
• performance
• playful activism

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Special Issue Editor, Hannen Ghabra, for her continuous support and the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Laura Cervi

Laura Cervi is a Serra Hunter Professor and researcher at the Department of Journalism and Communication Sciences of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). She has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pavia (Italy) and the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain). Her main research interests are political communication and online activism.

Carles Marín-Lladó

Carles Marín-Lladó is a Full Professor at the Rey Juan Carlos University (Madrid, Spain), where he teaches subjects related to communication, TV News, multimedia, and speech analysis. From 2006 to 2009 he was Associate Dean at the Faculty of Communication Sciences of the Rey Juan Carlos University. From 2017 to 2018 he was Vice-Chancellor of Communication of the Rey Juan Carlos University.