ABSTRACT

TikTok Cultures in the United States examines the role of TikTok in US popular culture, paying close attention to the app’s growing body of subcultures.

Featuring an array of scholars from varied disciplines and backgrounds, this book uses TikTok (sub)cultures as a point of departure from which to explore TikTok’s role in US popular culture today. Engaging with the extensive and growing scholarship on TikTok from international scholars, chapters in this book create frameworks and blueprints from which to analyze TikTok within a distinctly US context, examining topics such as gender and sexuality, feminism, race and ethnicity and wellness.

Shaping TikTok as an interdisciplinary field in and of itself, this insightful and timely volume will be of great interest to students and scholars of new and digital media, social media, popular culture, communication studies, sociology of media, dance, gender studies, and performance studies.

chapter |13 pages

Introduction

The Rise of TikTok in US Culture

part Section One|44 pages

Race and Ethnicity on TikTok

chapter 1|11 pages

The D'Amelio Effect

TikTok, Charli D'Amelio, and the Construction of Whiteness

chapter 3|8 pages

TikTok for Us by Us

Black Girlhood, Joy, and Self-care

chapter 4|12 pages

#JewishTikTok

The JewToks' Fight against Antisemitism

part Section Two|36 pages

Gender and Sexuality on TikTok

chapter 5|11 pages

Watching TikTok, Feeling Feminism

Intergenerational Flows of Feminist Knowledge

chapter 6|12 pages

“Do you want to form an alliance with me?”

Glimpses of Utopia in the Works of Queer Women and Non-Binary Creators on TikTok

chapter 7|11 pages

Trans TikTok

Sharing Information and Forming Community

part Section Three|35 pages

TikTok (Sub)Cultures

chapter 8|11 pages

Hocus-Pocus

WitchTok Education for Baby Witches

chapter 9|9 pages

Wellness TikTok

Morning Routines, Eating Well, and Getting Ready to Be “That Girl”

chapter 10|9 pages

Hype It Up

US Latinx Theater on TikTok

chapter |4 pages

Afterword

TikTok Industrial Complex; or Twenty-First-Century Transculturative Creative Critical Collaboratory?