2024/12/19 by Paolo Gerbaudo · 2 voices · 60 citations
Social Sciences · #Communication #Computer science #Digital Marketing and Social Media #Impact of Technology on Adolescents #Internet privacy #Interpersonal communication #Media studies #Political science #Politics #Public relations #Publics #Social Media and Politics #Social media #Sociology #World Wide Web
paper · doi:10.1177/14614448241304106
published in New Media & Society 28(3), 1019-1036 (SAGE Publishing)
openalex publication_date 2024/12/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
The rise of TikTok has sparked a debate on the consequences of algorithmic content curation for social experience. My thesis is that TikTok represents a second generation of social media, which differs from first-generation social media in the way users are exposed to content. While first-generation social media revolved around ‘networked publics’ formed by explicit interpersonal connections, second-generation social media introduces ‘clustered publics’. These are statistically constructed ‘neighbourhoods’ of users, in which people are brought together based on their past online behaviour and their similarity in interest and taste. Clustering users around shared interests has proven very effective in driving online engagement, leading other platforms to mimic TikTok, in what can be described as ‘TikTokification’. However, this transformation of online publics carries a series of problematic implications: the depersonalisation of online experience; a growing opacity of the structures of online communication; and the further subcultural fragmentation of an already divided digital public sphere.