Teachable moments: TikTok social drama as a site of Black feminist intellectual production

ABSTRACT

This paper mobilizes Turner’s concept of ‘social drama’ – dramatic social events marked by conflict, antagonism, and competition through which communities articulate social norms – to examine how users engage in drama to negotiate the intersecting race, gender, and sexual power dynamics on TikTok. Through an analysis of two TikTok social dramas, I demonstrate how the technological affordances of the platform shape how users respond to drama and argue TikTok’s predominantly younger use-base utilize the platform to discuss, negotiate, and put in place socially progressive norms around racism, sexism, and homophobia. Further, I show how these dramas create opportunities for Black and of color women, femme, and queer TikTok users to engage in digital Black feminism by drawing on their lived experiences and using platform affordances to comment on the situation and educate other users. The paper concludes by considering the role of platform social dramas in bringing both opportunity and harm to marginalized users.

KEYWORDS:

• Social drama
• social media
• TikTok
• Black feminism
• Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis

Introduction

TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media platform, has become overwhelmingly popular with younger Americans (Hutchinson, 2022), arguably because TikTok has branded itself as the ‘fun’ platform, providing users with features that afford interactivity and creativity (Abidin, 2019; Schellewald, 2021; Zulli & Zulli, 2022). However, interactivity also allows for ‘drama’ – dramatic and emotional events marked by conflict, antagonism, and competition (Turner, 1980, 1988). While in public discourse, drama is often viewed as frivolous, negative interactions, in this study, I draw on Turner’s (1980) ‘social drama framework’ to position drama as a productive discourse through which TikTok users negotiate their values around important sociopolitical topics.

This study engages in a Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA) (Brock, 2018) of videos surrounding two U.S. TikTok dramas centering racial, gender, and sexual power dynamics: feminist influencer Chelsea Hart’s sexual misconduct claims against Indigenous activist Lance Tsosie and New York Times film critic Lena Wilson's harassment claims against actor Amandla Stenberg. In my analysis, I use the social drama framework to examine how TikTok users, particularly Black and of color women, femme, and queer users, utilize drama to negotiate and set intra-platform norms around the intersecting power dynamics of race, gender, and sexuality by engaging platform affordances and rituals, and what users’ responses to these dramas reveal about the sociopolitical norms the platforms’ predominantly Gen-Z users aim to establish. Further, if the interactions on social media are a reflection of our society, then more broadly, this study aims to explicate the role of digital platforms in revealing how younger individuals within society may be setting norms around important social and political issues.

Social drama as a norm-setting function

Scottish cultural anthropologist Victor Turner developed the concept of ‘social drama’ to understand structured ‘conflictive, competitive, and agonistic’ social interactions within groups that share common interests, values, or histories (Turner, 1988, p. 34). The main actors in social dramas often occupy a position of ‘high-value priority’ or importance within the community. The social drama framework consists of four public stages: (1) breach, someone within the community publicly breaches a cultural value or rule, challenging community norms; (2) crisis, actors within the community publicly deliberate the infraction, judging the action and taking sides; (3) redress, procedures are put in place to address and limit the spread of the breach, including anything from public or private advice to legal processes, depending on the community's rituals; and (4) if redress is successful is reconciliation, the reintegration of those involved in the breach into the community (Turner, 1980, 1988). Thus, social dramas are social and political processes that help define and solidify power around particular norms, and the discourses surrounding them in the crisis phase act as frameworks through which we can clarify how members of a community draw on a matrix of rituals to negotiate, contest, and implement new regimens of social and political power.

The mediatization of social drama through affordances

Communications scholars have used the social drama framework to analyze the role of dominant media institutions and technologies in shaping and reorienting social drama (Bishop, 2001; Ettema, 1990; McDevitt et al., 2013). Recently, scholars have become interested in how digitally mediated platforms make social drama visible outside of press institutions, expand the range of actors who can be involved in social dramas, and how individuals engage the affordances of digital platforms to narrate social dramas (Liu, 2020; Ostertag, 2020; Quick, 2021). Therein, applying the social drama framework to TikTok drama allows us to explore these incidents not just as frivolous public spats but as negotiations of power between platform users, informed by TikTok’s specific rituals and technological affordances.

Affordances are the ‘multi-faceted relational structure … of the technology artifact’ that makes available or constrains user behavior (Evans et al., 2017; Faraj & Azad, 2013, p. 254). The concept of affordances was introduced to technology studies by Norman (1988), who used the terms affordances and perceived affordances to denote how an object's design or perceived design can shape usage. Thus, technological affordances are the material and perceived elements of technology that shape user behavior (Silver & Markus, 2008).

Recently, to address the lack of clarity in how the term ‘affordances’ is operationalized in technology and communication research, scholars have developed frameworks for defining what is and what is not an affordance. Scholars at the intersection of technology and information studies have proposed combining affordance theory with activity theory to create a theoretical framework for understanding how users engage different types of affordances, namely: handling affordances, the design aspect and features of a tool that impact the physical and perceived possibilities for interaction, effector affordances, the possibility of using technology to support user goals; and motivational affordances, possibilities of technology for satisfying the user(s) motives after their goal is achieved (Zhao et al., 2020). Evans et al. (2017) propose an Affordances Threshold Criteria for determining if something is an affordance in that it (1) is not an object or feature of an object (a handling affordance), (2) is not the outcome of an affordance (a motivational affordance), and (3) has variability or range in that its availability can be scaled (more or less) as opposed to being a binary. In this study, I followed Evans et al. (2017) criteria threshold to define and discuss the affordances of TikTok that may shape how users engage in social drama on the platform. Thus, objects on the platform, such as ‘share’ and ‘like’ buttons, filters, and other TikTok-specific technological features, or the outcome of affordances, such as socialization, are not considered affordances but conduits to and outcomes of affordances.

TikTok presents an illuminating site to examine drama surrounding race, gender, and sexual power dynamics through a social drama framework, given the novel affordances and emerging demographics of the platform. TikTok is a video-based social media platform that allows users to share short, 1–3-minute videos (Boffone, 2021). Since TikTok's international launch¹ in 2017, it has become one of the most influential and fastest-growing social media platforms (Perez, 2021). TikTok boasts over 1 billion monthly active global users and 150 million monthly active users in the U.S., approximately 60% of which are part of ‘Generation-Z,’² giving younger Americans, who traditionally hold more liberal views around race and social justice, an outsized role in defining platform norms (Parker et al., 2019; Wallaroo Media, 2023). To clarify, I am not suggesting younger users are the only ones involved in TikTok social dramas; however, these demographics highlight that Gen-Z users play a large role in user-driven actions and discussions on the platform. Applying the social drama framework to TikTok can give us insight into how the platform’s predominantly younger users set norms around social issues and power inequities, by engaging in rituals through the platform’s specific affordances, outlined below (Zeng & Abidin, 2021).

The digital affordances of TikTok

As a video-based platform, the ability to record and upload videos in-app using a smartphone affords persistence and intimacy. Users’ ability to record themselves and upload it to TikTok affords persistence in allowing them to archive everyday interactions (Schellewald, 2021). Further, while videos can be removed from the platform, the ‘save’ feature enables users to save and continue circulating removed content. Additionally, users’ ability to record and upload videos from their mobile devices encourages the convention of direct address, in which users speak directly facing the camera, which affords intimacy between a user and others viewing their video.

TikTok’s features also afford interactivity. TikTok allows users to like, comment, share, and repost other users’ videos. Additionally, platform-specific features, such as stitching, which enable users to attach their video with another user’s video; duetting, which allows users to split-screen their video with another video; and comment replies, which allows users to reply to a comment in a video, encourage users to build upon one another’s content to create larger, platform-wise discourses (Schellewald, 2021). TikTok also allows users to turn the original audio of their posts into ‘sounds,’ which can then be re-used and re-mixed by other users, allowing for what Zulli & Zulli (2022) term TikTok’s ‘imitation publics,’ or digital connection through imitation. These features enable interactivity between users, supporting outcomes of sociality and collaboration across the platform.

TikTok’s features also afford creativity. TikTok users, especially ‘creators,’ the term used to refer to users who actively make content on TikTok, can combine video with text on-screen, audio, and images. The platform's plethora of in-app editing features, including filters, gifs, and greenscreen backgrounds, allows creators to be original and inventive in making their posts. Through these features, TikTok affords users creativity in how they express themselves and engage in discussion on the platform. Further, the affordance of creativity supports the outcome of ‘fun’ and ‘silliness’ on the platform (Roose, 2018).

TikTok’s most defining design feature is its ‘For You Page’ (FYP) algorithm, which offers users the perceived affordance of anonymity. The FYP presents each user with a curated selection of content from across the TikTok platform generated by a predictive algorithm programmed to compile content that meets each user’s presumed interests (TikTok, 2020). The FYP is TikTok’s default page, meaning most TikTok users’ engagement happens with FYP-produced content instead of content from friends or family (Bhandari & Bimo, 2022). Further, studies examining TikTok users’ FYP ‘algorithmic folk theories,’ or informal theories of how FYP functions, have found that users believe that the FYP algorithm sorts them into a networked community, or ‘sides’ of TikTok as they are often called, of unknown users based on an ever-changing understanding of their interests (Barta & Andalibi, 2021; Lee et al., 2022). Thus, the FYP structure provides TikTok users with the perceived affordance of anonymity, which can encourage emotional honesty and authenticity in communication (Schellewald, 2021).

Recent studies have highlighted how TikTok users draw on these platform features and affordances to engage in social activism and political discourses around systemic racial, gender, and sexual marginalization and power (Cervi & Divon, 2023; Eriksson Krutrök & Åkerlund, 2023; Peterson-Salahuddin, 2022). These studies found TikTok users often draw on the platform’s affordance of creativity, through the use of audio memes and engaging in TikTok-native ‘challenges,’³ and interactivity, through the use of features such as duetting, and intimacy afforded by the platform’s casual nature to comment on racism, sexism, and homophobia on the platform, mainly centering on the perceived injustices of TikTok’s platform governance, and within society more broadly (Cervi & Divon, 2023; Le Compte & Klug, 2021; Peterson-Salahuddin, 2022; Rauchberg, 2022). However, it is still unclear how these same affordances are used to negotiate racial, gender, and sexual power dynamics between users on the platform. Thus, building on this literature, I use drama as an entry point to consider how similar dynamics of power and oppression are negotiated between users on the TikTok platform.

TikTok social drama meets digital Black feminism

Steele (2021b) suggests Black women use mimicry on TikTok to lean into ‘drama’ to engage in its libidinal economy or pleasure (Brock, 2020). Steele (2021b) points to the #BlackTikTokStrike, during which Black women creators, tired of white (especially white women) creators profiting from dance challenges they originated, went on ‘strike,’ refusing to create a new dance to Megan Thee Stallion’s ‘Thot Shit;’ and instead, began making videos in which they ‘danced like a white girl,’ poking fun at white women creators’ uncoordinated and lackluster dancing. Steele argues these Black women creators used drama as an entry point to engage in digital Black feminism.⁴

Digital Black feminism is how Black women, men, and non-binary folks espouse Black feminist principles and politics through online and digital practices (Steele, 2021a). Digital Black feminism draws its roots from Black feminist theory, a political stance and line of intellectual production developed from Black women’s unique lived experiences that argue for an ‘integrated analysis and practice based upon the fact that the major systems of oppression (i.e., racism, sexism, classism, nationalism) are interlocking’ (Combahee River Collective, 1978, p. 210). Thus, Black feminism offers us a lens through which to understand how systems of oppression come together to shape our lived experiences and worldviews (Collins, 2000). Digital Black feminism, in particular, draws on the affordances of digital media to create principles and praxis that are new and distinct from previous iterations of Black feminism (Steele, 2021a). Thus, building on Steele’s work on drama and digital Black feminism on TikTok, I apply the social drama framework to consider, more broadly, the affordances Black and of color women, femme, and queer TikTok users draw on to negotiate and establish intra-platform power dynamics through drama.

Methods

To examine the relationship between social drama, affordances, and digital Black feminism on TikTok, I engaged in Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CDTA) (Brock, 2018) of videos surrounding two U.S. social dramas on TikTok: feminist influencer Chelsea Hart’s sexual misconduct allegations against Indigenous influencer Lance Tsosie, commonly known on TikTok as ‘Womblands,’ and New York Times critic Lena Wilson’s sexual harassment claims against actress Amandla Stenberg. I chose these two social dramas as case studies because (1) the main actors in both social dramas occupied a position of ‘high-value priority’ within the TikTok community due to their celebrity and/or influencer status (Turner, 1980), (2) these dramas began and unfolded on TikTok, making these discussions and negotiations of power specific to the TikTok community, and (3) both cases present the complex dynamics for thinking about the intersections of systemic privilege and oppression – specifically both dramas were initiated when a white queer person, in calling out perceived misogyny, transgressed community norms around racism, misogynoir, and racialized sexism in how they chose to call out individuals of color. Thus, like the #BlackTikTokStrike, these dramas became entry points through which TikTok users could employ platform affordances to set norms around complex social power dynamics and engage in digital Black feminism.

Data collection

I collected videos about these dramas in two phases. First, I engaged in a digital-ethnography-informed exploration of each drama on TikTok. Drawing from digital ethnographic methods, after encountering each ‘breach’ in my TikTok usage, I spent the next week following each ‘crisis’ unfold, immersing myself in these dramas as a field site by viewing, taking notes, commenting on videos about the incident, and downloading videos using TikTok’s ‘save’ feature when available ⁵ (Hine, 2016).⁶ This exploration resulted in 43 saved videos about ‘Womblands’ and six saved videos about ‘Wilson and Stenberg.’

Then, I downloaded a secondary set of videos using Johannes Gruber’s ‘traktok’ (Gruber, 2022) to capture videos that may not have presented themselves in my FYP. Using the desktop version of TikTok, I used the keywords ‘Womblands,’ ‘Lena Wilson,’ and ‘Amandla Stenberg’ to search for public TikToks that referenced these dramas in their caption or hashtags and used the scraper to download videos posted within two weeks of each breach. This search resulted in an additional 195 videos about ‘Womblands’ and 174 videos about Lena Wilson and Amandla Stenberg. I then deleted all videos unrelated to the drama, resulting in a final set of 217 videos about ‘Womblands’ and 149 about Lena Wilson and Amandla Sternberg for analysis.

Analytical approach

To analyze these videos, I engaged in Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA), a multimodal approach to the analysis of digital objects that simultaneously considers the material and digital design of technology alongside the socio-culturally mediated use of said technologies for discursive and cultural meaning-making (Brock, 2018). Using Atlas.ti, I coded videos for how TikTok creators used the technological affordances of the platforms and how they thematically responded to the drama. In following CDTA’s provocation to integrate critical technocultural analysis with theory that ‘draw[s] directly from the perspective of the group under examination’ (Brock, 2018, p. 1017), while I analyzed all videos in my datasets, my analysis engaged Black feminist theories to examine the culturally specific ways Black and of color women, femme, and queer creators engaged these affordances as a digital Black feminist praxis.

In line with previous studies of social drama theory in communication studies (see Bishop, 2001; Liu, 2020; McDevitt et al., 2013; Quick, 2021), I use social drama theory as the scaffold for my analysis, organizing my findings according to the public stages of the social drama framework, specifically breach, where I describe the moment when the actor(s) violated a community value, and crisis, where I analyze how users engaged platform affordances in videos to discussions and debate these actions, engaging the social drama framework to illustrate how these dramas and responses to them aimed to establish collective community values and norms on the platform about intersecting racial, gender, and sexual power dynamics (Turner, 1980, 1988). Within these stages, I organized findings thematically to reflect how TikTok creators used platform affordances to express their values.

Deep in my Womblands: misogyny, racism, and everything in between

Breach

On 2 March 2022, a white femme⁷ TikTok influencer, Chelsea Hart (@chelseahartisme), shared a video to their over 1 million followers accusing fellow TikTok influencer, Indigenous activist Lance Tsosie (previously @modern_warrior_), of manipulating them into having unprotected sex. Hart claimed they had been pursuing a romantic relationship with Tsosie and, believing their relationship to be monogamous, had decided to visit him and engage in unprotected sex. However, less than 24 hours after returning home, Hart saw a TikTok video Tsosie posted of himself on a date with another person, leading Hart to publicly accuse Tsosie of manipulating them into an unsafe sexual relationship, violating their trust, and feeling ‘entitled to [their] body.’ In a subsequent video, Hart said they ‘did not consent to that sex,’ insinuating that their sexual encounter now constituted assault. In initial comments responding to Hart’s posts, many TikTok users, particularly women, rallied around them, calling out Tsosie for his misogynistic behavior.

However, the video also sparked racist white supremacist lies about and harassment of Tsosie, who was already the target of racist attacks because he used his platform to call out white supremacy, using the catchphrase ‘hey colonizer.’ In response, Tsosie posted and later deleted a video apologizing to Hart. Tsosie’s apology emphasized that his relationship with Hart was a ‘friendship,’ implicitly countering Hart’s claim that their relationship was romantic and allegations of sexual misconduct, and called the incident a matter of ‘miscommunication.’ Since there was no consensus around the issues and values raised in Tsosie’s apology, as Turner (1988) notes, ‘the redressive machinery premised on such a consensus loses its legitimacy’ (p.53), leading to a return to crisis amongst community members.

In Hart’s response to Tsosie’s apology video, they impassionedly stated, ‘I have an ache, deep in my womb, Lance.’ However, due to how Hart blended ‘womb’ and ‘Lance’ together and viewers’ assumptions that she was appropriating a little-known Indigenous word, give the drama a new name: ‘Womblands.’⁸

Crisis

Laughing and crying: using creativity to call out white women’s tears

TikTok users engaged platform features to comedically comment on the situation – particularly whether Hart weaponized their tears as a white woman. As Black feminist scholars argue, the rape and forced labor of enslaved Black women constructed a dichotomy in the Western imagination, where Black women are seen as aggressive, sexually promiscuous, and tough, and white women are seen as delicate, chaste, and helpless (Davis, 1981). Thus, while U.S. white women have historically been oppressed under patriarchy, their presumed helplessness and tears have been used as an excuse to harm Black and Indigenous people. As Accapadi (2007) notes, this phenomenon of ‘white women’s tears’ allows white women to strategically deploy their whiteness to avoid facing their privilege and reproduce systems of oppression (Phipps, 2021).

Creators used platform features such as text on screen, audio memes, and remixing Tsosie and Hart’s videos together to highlight how the continued digital circulation of Hart’s tears prompted racist attacks against Tsosie (Figure 1). For instance, in a series of videos, user @_jinx* edited together Hart’s and Tsosie’s videos during the ‘breach’ stage to resemble the opening sequence to a television show, soundtracked by theme music from well-known soap operas, such as ‘Dallas,’ with a title card stating the show was ‘Created by YT Woman Tears.’ In this way, @_jinx*, like many other users, drew on the creativity and playfulness afforded by TikTok to highlight the saga's melodramatic nature and the foundation role of white women’s tears in the breach and subsequent crisis (Cervi & Divon, 2023).

Figure 1. Comedic commentary on Hart’s white woman ‘tears’.

Accountability through interactivity

Many Black and of color women, femme, and queer creators drew on the interactivity provided by TikTok’s features to hold Hart accountable through the lens of Black feminist theory and their own lived experiences. In the days preceding Hart’s accusations, Tsosie reposted a video from an Indigenous woman, Witchytwitchy (@witchytwitchytv), leading Hart’s followers to believe Witchytwitchy was the person Tsosie ‘cheated’ on them with, and, in turn, harass and mass report Witchytwitchy’s account.

To respond to Hart, Witchytwitchy opted not to stitch or duet Hart’s video, which she said could open her up to more harassment from Hart’s followers. Instead, Witchytwitchy used the greenscreen feature, which allows users to make a video or image the background of their video, to play a screen recording of a video Hart posted telling their followers not to harass before adding her response:

The anti-native rhetoric that this has validated and spawned all over TikTok has been insane … and all this from white women in the name of feminism and defending and believing women … When your favorite TikTok creator gets harmed, you just throw all of this intersectionality out the fucking window.

Witchytwitchy calls on intersectionality, a term and analytic framework developed by legal studies scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989, 1991) that draws on Black feminist theory and critical legal studies to argue that people’s lived experiences must be understood through simultaneously examining multiple axes of oppression, such as race and gender, as opposed to any single axis such as race or gender, to show how the privilege of white feminism precipitated the racist attacks she faced. Further, she used perceived interactivity afforded by the greenscreen feature to hold Hart accountable for not considering the power of their white privilege when making public accusations against Tsosie (Figure 2).

Figure 2. @WitchyTwitchy’s greenscreen ‘stitch’ of Hart’s video.

Other Black and of color women, femme, and queer creators engaged the interactivity afforded by TikTok’s stitching and duetting features to directly call out how Hart’s mobilized their ‘white woman tears’ to gain support and harm creators of color, specifically Tsosie and Witchywitchy. A Black woman creator, @coldp*, stitched a video Hart posted recalling how Tsosie’s betrayal was especially distressing because their relationship with Tsosie helped them recover from ‘losing a child’⁹ to argue that while what Tsosie did was wrong, Hart used theatrics and misleading language to gain sympathy from women who have suffered from miscarriages and infertility issues and provoke racist harassment of Tsosie. Likewise, creator @jogma*, an Indigenous woman creator, stitched a video that stitched together five previous videos, which took us behind the scenes ‘on the set of Womblands,’ engaging the creativity afforded by the platform to comedically highlight how Hart arguably dramatized her white woman victimhood to gain support.

Several creators also used TikTok’s sound feature to mimic Hart’s videos, engaging in TikTok’s ‘imitation publics’ (Zulli & Zulli, 2022). While many White creators used Hart’s audio to mock their theatrics, Black and of color women, femme, and queer creators specifically used this feature to highlight how Hart's actions perpetrated racialized sexism. For instance, creator @_stef*, an Asian woman, paired the audio ‘I have an ache deep in my womb, Lance’ with the on-screen caption: ‘When your account gets permed banned for not supporting women who make false accusations.’ Similarly, @itsr*, a Latine and Indigenous non-binary creator, used a clip from the same video of Hart saying, ‘You knew, you fucking knew,’ in an elongated and exaggerated way, with the text on screen, ‘When I had a feeling a certain someone was fetishizing Indigenous & Native American cultures,’ to call attention to what other creators noted was Hart’s use of an indigenous vocal fry in this phrase. Therein, these Black and of color women, femme, and queer creators used the interactivity and creativity afforded by TikTok’s greenscreen, stitching, dueting, and audio memetic features to playfully engage in the larger discourse around ‘Womblands’ and hold Hart accountable for using their ‘white women tears’ to incite harassment against creators of color as an expression of digital Black feminism (Cervi & Divon, 2023; Steele, 2021a) (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Creators use audio mimicry to comment on drama.

Teaching through digital intimacy

Many Black women, femme, and queer creators also used TikTok’s recording features to teach others on the platform about the nuances of the varying power dynamics of those involved in the drama. In one video, creator @thatb*, a Black woman, faces the camera dressed casually in workout clothing and gives an intersectional analysis of the ever-growing web of drama, noting in one part of the video:

A man of color [Tsosie] can 100% deal with racism and white supremacist rhetoric, and death threats due to white supremacy and false accusations … But because he's a man, he still benefits from misogyny and patriarchy. So, if a couple of white women [Hart] say, ‘hey, this man was being sexually predatory … and didn't allow me informed consent,’ that can also be true. However, because white supremacy has used white women's pain and tears as a tool to perpetuate white supremacy and racism onto people of color, so much so that some white women lie, it makes sense for some people to be hesitant … And it can also be true that a woman of color [Witchytwitcy] that's not even fucking involved but solely because she's a part of the same marginalized identity as the man accused will deal with racism, white supremacy, misogyny because society goes so far to protect the tears and pain of white women that they will go to scapegoat anybody.

@thatb* draws on the recordability and intimacy of TikTok to have a casual conversation with the viewer and create a persistent record on the platform in which she demonstrates intersectional and Black feminist analysis for others (Le Compte & Klug, 2021).

Similarly, using the same direct-address style of video, @coco*, another Black woman creator, draws on her expertise as a lawyer and sexual assault survivor to comment on claims that what Tsosie did was assault. @coco* contends that while what Tsosie did was ‘hot garbage,’ it did not legally meet the standard of sexual assault, stating, ‘this [video] … is to protect women like me who say they have been violated … but y'all ignore and gaslight us every single fucking day.’ While not explicitly stated, within the context of the video, ‘women like me’ arguably alludes to women of color who are less likely to be believed when making assault allegations (see Williams, 1986). Further, the perceived anonymity offered through the FYP design may have played a role in @coco* feeling safe enough to share her experience as a sexual assault survivor. Thus, in leaning into drama, these creators drew on TikTok’s affordances of persistence and intimacy to engage in a pedagogical practice of digital Black feminism.

Who's got the power: the [white/queer] critic vs. the [black/queer] actor

Breach

On 18 August 2020, film critic Lena Wilson (previously @neilsmom), a white masc-presenting lesbian, took to TikTok and Twitter to post a video calling out actor Amandla Stenberg (@amandlafr) for what she perceived to be harassment. According to Wilson, she received an Instagram direct message from Stenberg, whose latest movie, Bodies, Bodies, Bodies (2022), Wilson had reviewed for The New York Times, that read, ‘ur review was great, maybe if you had gotten your eyes off my tits, you could’ve watched the movie!’ which Wilson suggested was harassing and homophobic. From a screenshot of the message, viewers could see that Wilson briefly replied to the message before blocking Stenberg, cutting off future communication. In the video, Wilson said she didn’t ‘want anything else to come of this’ but that she posted the messages because she didn’t want ‘this person who has more social power than [her] to think that it’s fucking okay to do something like this.’

Initial comments responding to Wilson’s video were supportive. Users apologized to Wilson for the harassment she endured, echoed the belief that Stenberg's message was homophobic, and questioned whether a male critic would have received the same response. However, as the day went on, users questioned the appropriateness of publicizing Stenberg’s once-private message. Commenters also noted that in her video, Wilson neglected to mention that in her review, she wrote, ‘The only thing that really sets “Bodies Bodies Bodies” apart is its place in the A24 hype machine, where it doubles as a 95-minute advertisement for cleavage and Charli XCX’s latest single,’ which was presumably the line Stenberg was responding to in her message.

The following day, Stenberg, who identifies as queer and non-binary, posted a response video saying they thought the message was ‘hilarious’ and meant to directly address the claims that the film was a ‘95-minute advertisement for cleavage.’ Additionally, Stenberg said that as an actor with larger breasts, they often feel hypersexualized in Hollywood. Stenberg ended the video by calling both the review and her message hilarious, saying the message was not intended to harass Wilson but be a joke between two queer people. However, TikTok users still wanted redress from Wilson.

Crisis

Accountability through interactivity: part II

Several Black and of color women, femme, and queer creators, alongside a handful of white femme and queer creators, used the stitch feature to respond directly to Wilson’s claims. Notably, many Black and of color women and femme creators used the stitch feature to call out the racist and misogynoir implications of Wilson’s sexualization of Stenberg in her review. Stitching Wilson’s video, @alph*, a Black non-binary masc creator, said despite Wilson’s intent in writing that line:

There’s so much history of white people sexualizing Black women … using the sexuality of Black women to discredit them. So no, I don’t really think Amandla was that crazy for saying something about you staring at her tits.

@alph* uses the interactivity provided by stitches to highlight how Wilson’s reading of Stenberg’s cleavage as sexual in the film can be positioned as part of a larger history in which white people hypersexualize Black women due to their specific and unique positionality at the intersection of race and gender marginalization (Collins, 2004). Like with ‘Womblands,’ the stitch feature not only allowed for interactivity but also allowed marginalized creators to use Black feminist theory as a frame to highlight how Wilson’s actions perpetuated racist and sexist rhetoric around Black women’s bodies.

Persistence & interactivity for pedagogy

After Wilson began receiving increased backlash, she set her TikTok account to private, disabling comments and stitches before eventually deleting her accounts as a form of impression management (Klug, 2022). However, in response, many creators began using the greenscreen feature to edit screen-recorded and downloaded versions of Wilson’s video into their videos to reply to her claims (Figure 4). @crut*, a Black woman creator, stitched another user’s video who previously stitched Wilson’s video before she deleted it, responding:

White queer people are marginalized on the axis of queerness, so to a certain extent, they understand the language of marginalized spaces, but only for their own benefit … They don’t understand intersectionality unless it impacts them because posting a private DM that no one has to know about and then acting like you’re a victim of homophobia completely ignores the fact that Black queer people exist and that the very person DMing you is Black and queer.

Using the perceived interactivity afforded by TikTok’s greenscreen features, @crut* found a way to respond directly to Wilson’s video to teach viewers about the politics of privilege and oppression within the queer community through the lens of intersectionality. In this way, drawing on the persistence afforded by TikTok’s recordability and save feature, creators found ways to directly engage with Wilson’s video to achieve the interactivity they desired and engage in a larger discussion about power through a Black feminist lens.

Figure 4. Creators use greenscreen screen recordings of Wilson’s video to respond to her comments.

Creatively assembling new perspectives

Several Black and of color women, femme, and queer creators also used the platform’s editing features to creatively frame a larger argument around what they perceived to be the problematic nature of Wilson’s video. One way creators did this was by editing Wilson’s original video into shorter 5–10 s segments, like @dani*, a Black woman creator who challenged Wilson’s claim that Stenberg had more ‘social power’ than her by pointing to Wilson’s social privilege, noting, ‘you write for the New York Times. I don’t think there is a stronger example of having social power.’ Black and of color women, femme, and queer creators also mixed parts of Wilson’s video and other screenshots to build their argument. For instance, @myca*edited together snippets of Wilson’s video alongside a screenshot of Wilson’s review and Wilson’s old TikTok videos to frame the interaction within Wilson’s own race and class privilege. Thus, the creativity afforded by TikTok’s editing features allowed Black and of color women, femme, and queer creators to provide evidence to help walk viewers through how they understood and interpreted Wilson’s disclosure and accusations against Stenberg and reframe Wilson’s words and actions within a Black feminist framework (Le Compte & Klug, 2021) (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Creators creatively assemble content to critique Wilson’s behavior.

Discussion

Using the social drama framework as a scaffold to analyze video around two TikTok endemic dramas, ‘Womblands’ and Lena Wilson’s claims of harassment against actor Amandla Stenberg, unveils how in each incident after the initial breach, during the crisis phase, users drew on platform affordances and features to highlight how white queer creators’ experience of harm did not prevent them from wielding their racial and class privilege to perpetuate harm and oppression against creators of color, particularly women and queer creators of color. Through these discussions, users pushed for new community norms around how platform users cannot wield their marginalized identities to oppress others. Examining these events through a social drama framework positions them as processes through which TikTok users negotiate norms around power dynamics on the platform. Thus, in line with Zeng and Abidin's (2021) contention that Gen-Z uses TikTok as a space to construct and contest everyday politics, I argue that TikTok’s predominantly Gen-Z users engage the platform to discuss, negotiate, and put in place socially progressive norms around racism, sexism, and homophobia.

Further, the imagined and perceived affordances of the TikTok platform informed how TikTok users responded to the drama. While previous studies of social drama through digital media, such as blogs and other social media platforms, revealed discourses toned in anger and frustration (Liu, 2020; Ostertag, 2020; Quick, 2021), in line with previous studies of activism and political discussions on TikTok, TikTok users engaged platform affordances, particularly the interactivity and creativity afforded by TikTok’s audiovisual editing features, to respond to the drama in memetic, joking, jestful ways as a reflection of platform norms of sociality and fun (Cervi & Divon, 2023).

These dramas also allowed Black and of color women, femme, and queer users on the platform an entry point to dissect and rearticulate these dramas through the lens of Black feminism. The affordances of interactivity, intimacy, and persistence allowed Black women, femme, and queer creators to teach their TikTok audiences about power and privilege through Black feminist frameworks, revealing a unique Black feminist praxis on TikTok. At the same time, affordances were used in distinct ways in each drama. In ‘Womblands,’ commenters drew on digital intimacy and persistence as a pedagogical tool. However, unlike Le Compte and Klug (2021) argument that the casual nature of activist engagement on TikTok is a form of slacktivism, or low-effort political engagement, in this case, users drew on the casual nature of the platform to have an intimate, yet thoughtful conversation with their followers. In Wilson and Stenberg's drama, commenters used creative editing to build rebuttal commentary, like activists on the platform, engaging the platform's simple editing tools as a part of their rhetorical creation practices (Le Compte & Klug, 2021). Thus, through uniquely drawing on TikTok’s features and affordances, Black and of color women, femme, and queer creators on the platform not only engaged in the larger crisis discussion but specifically used it as an opportunity to teach others on the platform about power and oppression through the lens of Black feminism, especially drawing on intersectionality and a raced and gendered analysis of oppression. Therein, this study further contributes to the literature on digital Black feminism, particularly as it relates to drama on TikTok, by elucidating the unique way Black and of color women, femme, and queer folks on TikTok draw on the platform’s affordances broadly when leaning into drama to engage, not only in pleasure but also pedagogical practice.

Limitations

This study has limitations. As dramas centering U.S.-based creators, U.S. understanding of power and oppression informed debates around these incidences. Future studies should examine how these dynamics may take shape on TikTok or other social media platforms in non-Western social and cultural contexts. Additionally, while CDTA allowed me to observe and analyze videos about these dramas, I cannot presume to know users’ motivations and thought processes behind their engagement beyond what they express publicly. Future studies should triangulate these findings using complementary methods, such as interviews and surveys, to understand users’ perceptions of drama on the platform and what informs their use of certain platform features and affordances.

Conclusion

This study reveals the importance of drama as a mechanism through which younger social media users, particularly Black women, femme, and queer social media users, increasingly assert Black feminist norms and principles in digital spaces and communities. Despite the antagonistic nature of drama, findings reveal how it can be a productive catalyst in inviting young people to define their communities in new ways that directly address the harms of racism, sexism, and homophobia. Thus, these social dramas become teachable moments through which younger generations push against larger U.S. social norms of white heteropatriarchy. Beyond TikTok, these dynamics reveal the increasingly important role of social media in revealing how younger individuals communicate the political norms and cultural values they aim to set in society.

Still, this analysis found narrow pathways to redress and reconciliation. In both case studies, as users looked for a form of redress, many began to turn to one of social media’s most prevalent forms of accountability: ‘canceling,’ an expression of agency in which users take their attention away from someone or something to hold them accountable that is uniquely enabled by capitalist demands and social media (Clark, 2020). As each drama unfolded, users ‘unfollowed’ those in breach who did not offer any proper redress – namely Tsosie, Hart, and Wilson. In ‘Womblands,’ as viewers withdrew their support, Hart and Tsosie both said they would be ‘taking a break’ from TikTok; thus, reintegration came in the form of all parties involved returning to the platform with the drama unresolved, leading it to spinoff into what TikTok users jokingly refer to as the various seasons of ‘Womblands,’ which only seemed to end in October 2022 when Tsosie permanently deleted his account. Comparatively, Wilson permanently deleted her account, foreclosing any reintegration during the crisis. These finding echoes previous studies of social drama on social media that have found few rituals for redress in the digital age beyond ‘canceling’ (Quick, 2021). However, if we situate canceling as Black discursive praxis of accountability to hold those in power to account, these instances of canceling may also reflect the shifting power dynamics away from hegemonic norms by marginalized communities on TikTok (Clark, 2020).

Further, the violence enacted through these social dramas still ended with material harm befalling women of color, WitchyTwitchy and Amandla Stenberg. As Boffone (2021) argues, TikTok often operates as a ‘white space’ because the default logic of whiteness as a norm often structures the technological underpinnings of the platform and, in turn, behaviors on the platform, making it another tool of white supremacy. Thus, while Black and of color women, femme, and queer people of color continue to engage in Black feminist intellectual production on TikTok, these actions are always being taken against the larger structures of whiteness embedded into the platform.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chelsea Peterson-Salahuddin

Chelsea Peterson-Salahuddin is a University of Michigan President’s Postdoctoral Fellow and Incoming Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan School of Information.

Dr. Peterson-Salahuddin’s research focuses on the culturally specific ways marginalized communities, most often Black women, femmes, and queer folks engage with mass and digital communications technologies to seek information, produce knowledge, and build community, as well as ways the infrastructure of these technologies help these communities to overcome or continue to replicate systemic barriers to equity. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Critical Studies in Media Communication, New Media and Society, and Social Media + Society. Chelsea received her MA and Ph.D. in Media, Technology, and Society from Northwestern University and her BA in Political Science and Media Studies from Vassar College.

Notes

1 TikTok is the international sister app of the Chinese social media app Douyin.

2 Anyone born from 1997 to 2010 (Dimock, 2019)

3 using specific pieces of audio to perform a funny meme or dance.

4 While the ‘drama’ Steele is referring to is not ‘social drama,’ the example still points to how dramas may manifest on TikTok around racial and gender power dynamics.

5 This feature must be enabled by the video creator.

6 I called this a ‘digital-ethnography-informed’ exploration instead of digital ethnography given that I did not have an extended engagement with the field site.

7 At the time of the incident, Hart publicly identified as a woman. However, after the crisis Hart came out as nonbinary with the preferred pronouns, they/them. For this reason, while throughout this text I refer to Hart using they/them pronouns, many creators discussing the situation on TikTik referred to Hart as a white woman and contextualized their understanding of Hart’s actions as that of a white woman.

8 The term ‘Womblands’ has now been added to Urban Dictionary, where it is defined as ‘the place where white women’s tears die.’ see: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Womblands

9 Initially viewers took this to mean Hart experienced a miscarriage, however, it was later revealed that Hart was a referring to an abortion, making many users on the platform feel they misrepresented the situation to gain sympathy.