Abstract
According to Alexa’s ranking of the top 500 sites on the web, YouTube takes the second place, demonstrating the importance of online services focused on sharing of short self-shot videos. With growing popularity of mobile phones, mobile only short video sharing social media applications appeared on the market. One of such applications is TikTok, probably the most talked-of video sharing platform of 2019, similar to its twin service for the Chinese market, called Douyin. The content on YouTube varies greatly in topic: from music and toys to science and technologies, from computer games and cooking to education and politics. But does the content on mobile short video platforms differ that much too? The content of 1,000 videos on TikTok as a prominent representative of mobile short video sharing social media services was analyzed to find out which content is common and popular on TikTok. Content analysis was applied as the main research technique. Comedy videos and musical performances turned out to be the most popular and the most frequent categories among both male and female performers. Comedy videos are, however, especially frequent among male creators. At that, videos related to beauty and DIY are common for females, but not for males. Additional attention in this study was paid to the potential law infringements on the platform. The cases of potential violations of copyright and personal rights were observed. Videos containing inappropriate contents such as violence, sexual activity, or consumption of drugs and alcohol were, by contrast, not revealed.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The top 500 sites on the web, www.alexa.com/topsites.
References
Scheibe, K., Fietkiewicz, K.J., Stock, W.G.: Information behavior on social live streaming services. J. Inf. Sci. Theory Pract. 4(2), 6–20 (2016)
ByteDance. https://www.bytedance.com/en/about. Accessed 20 Dec 2019
TikTok Newsroom: musical.ly and TikTok unite to debut new worldwide short-form video platform upgraded app, titled TikTok, now available globally. https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/musical-ly-and. Accessed 20 Dec 2019
TikTok continues to lead social app download rankings in September. https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/tiktok-continues-to-lead-social-app-download-rankings-in-september/565692/. Accessed 20 Dec 2019
TikTok Statistics That You Need to Know in 2020. https://www.oberlo.com/blog/tiktok-statistics. Accessed 20 Dec 2019
Lu, X., Lu, Z.: Fifteen seconds of fame: a qualitative study of Douyin, a short video sharing mobile application in China. In: Meiselwitz, G. (ed.) HCII 2019. LNCS, vol. 11578, pp. 233–244. Springer, Cham (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21902-4_17
TikTok mit 5,5 Mio. aktiven Nutzern in Deutschland. https://www.futurebiz.de/artikel/tiktok-nutzerzahlen-deutschland/. Accessed 20 Dec 2019
Making Smart Content Choices on TikTok. https://newsroom.tiktok.com/de-de/newsroom/making-smart-content-choices-on-tiktok. Accessed 20 Dec 2019
TikTok Newsroom: DIY: Duets & Reactions on TikTok. https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-gb/diy-duets-reactions-on-tiktok. Accessed 20 Dec 2019
Zhang, L., Wang, F., Liu, J.: Understand instant video clip sharing on mobile platforms: Twitter’s vine as a case study. In: Proceedings of Network and Operating System Support on Digital Audio and Video Workshop, pp. 85–90. ACM, New York (2014)
TikTok: Record fine for video sharing app over children’s data. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47396767. Accessed 20 Dec 2019
TikTok under investigation over child data use. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/02/tiktok-under-investigation-over-child-data-use. Accessed 20 Dec 2019
TikTok Transparency Report. https://www.tiktok.com/safety/resources/transparency-report. Accessed 20 Dec 2019
TikTok Has a Predator Problem. A Network of Young Women is Fighting Back. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/tiktok-has-a-predator-problem-young-women-are-fighting-back. Accessed 20 Dec 2019
Warum Tik Tok für Kinder gefährlich werden kann. https://www.focus.de/digital/handy/cybergrooming-warum-tik-tok-fuer-kinder-gefaehrlich-werden-kann_id_10407806.html. Accessed 20 Dec 2019
Gurbani, V.K., Migliosi, A., State, R., Payette, C., Cilli, B., Engel, T.: A characterization of short-video and distributed hot-spot activity in Instagram. In: Proceedings of the Principles, Systems and Applications on IP Telecommunications, pp. 28–34. ACM, New York (2015)
Hoffmann, C.P., Lutz, C., Meckel, M.: Content creation on the Internet: a social cognitive perspective on the participation divide. Inf. Commun. Soc. 18(6), 696–716 (2015)
McRoberts, S., Bonsignore, E., Peyton, T., Yarosh, S.: Do it for the viewers!: audience engagement behaviors of young YouTubers. In: Proceedings of the 15th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, pp. 334–343. ACM, New York (2016)
Milkaite, I., Lievens, E.: Child-friendly transparency of data processing in the EU: from legal requirements to platform policies. J. Child. Media 14(1), 5–21 (2019)
Badillo-Urquiola, K., Smriti, D., McNally, B., Golub, E., Bonsignore, E., Wisniewski, P.J.: Stranger danger!: social media app features co-designed with children to keep them safe online. In: Proceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, pp. 394–406. ACM, New York (2019)
Rettberg, J.W.: Hand signs for lip-syncing: the emergence of a gestural language on musical.ly as a video-based equivalent to emoji. Soc. Media+ Soc. 3(4) (2017)
Literat, I., Kligler-Vilenchik, N.: Youth collective political expression on social media: the role of affordances and memetic dimensions for voicing political views. New Media Soc. 21(9), 1988–2009 (2019)
Chen, Z., He, Q., Mao, Z., Chung, H., Maharjan, S.: A study on the characteristics of Douyin short videos and implications for edge caching. In: Proceedings of the ACM Turing Celebration Conference – China, pp. 1–6. ACM, New York (2019)
Zimmer, F., Scheibe, K., Stock, W.G.: A model for information behavior research on social live streaming services (SLSSs). In: Meiselwitz, G. (ed.) SCSM 2018. LNCS, vol. 10914, pp. 429–448. Springer, Cham (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91485-5_33
Yarosh, S., Bonsignore, E., McRoberts, S., Peyton, T.: YouthTube: youth video authorship on YouTube and vine. In: Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing, pp. 1423–1437. ACM, New York (2016)
Che, X., Ip, B., Lin, L.: A survey of current YouTube video characteristics. IEEE Multimed. 22(2), 56–63 (2015)
A Week in the Life of Popular YouTube Channels. https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/07/25/a-week-in-the-life-of-popular-youtube-channels/. Accessed 14 Oct 2019
Friedländer, M.B.: Streamer motives and user-generated content on social live-streaming services. J. Inf. Sci. Theory Pract. 5(1), 65–84 (2017)
van Oosten, J.M., Vandenbosch, L., Peter, J.: Gender roles on social networking sites: investigating reciprocal relationships between Dutch adolescents’ hypermasculinity and hyperfemininity and sexy online self-presentations. J. Child. Media 11(2), 147–166 (2017)
García Jiménez, A., Montes Vozmediano, M.: Subject matter of videos for teens on YouTube. Int. J. Adolesc. Youth 24(1), 63–78 (2020)
Scheibe, K., Zimmer, F.: Gender differences in perception of gamification elements on social live streaming services. Int. J. Interact. Commun. Syst. Technol. 9(2), 1–15 (2019)
Khan, M.L.: Social media engagement: what motivates user participation and consumption on YouTube? Comput. Hum. Behav. 66, 236–247 (2017)
Agrawal, S., Sureka, A.: Copyright infringement detection of music videos on YouTube by mining video and uploader meta-data. In: Bhatnagar, V., Srinivasa, S. (eds.) BDA 2013. LNCS, vol. 8302, pp. 48–67. Springer, Cham (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03689-2_4
Zimmer, F., Fietkiewicz, K.J., Stock, W.G.: Law infringements in social live streaming services. In: Tryfonas, T. (ed.) HAS 2017. LNCS, vol. 10292, pp. 567–585. Springer, Cham (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58460-7_40
Honka, A., Frommelius, N., Mehlem, A., Tolles, J.N., Fietkiewicz, K.J.: How safe is YouNow? An empirical study on possible law infringements in Germany and the United States. J. MacroTrends Soc. Sci. 1(1), 1–17 (2015)
Livingstone, S., Kirwil, L., Ponte, C., Staksrud, E.: In their own words: What bothers children online? Eur. J. Commun. 29(3), 271–288 (2014)
Huguenin, K., Kermarrec, A.M., Kloudas, K., Taïani, F.: Content and geographical locality in user-generated content sharing systems. In: Proceedings of the 22nd International Workshop on Network and Operating System Support for Digital Audio and Video, pp. 77–82. ACM, New York (2012)
Krippendorff, K.: Content Analysis: An Introduction to its Methodology, 2nd edn. Sage, Thousand Oaks (2004)
McMillan, S.J.: The challenge of applying content analysis for the World Wide Web. In: Krippendorff, K., Bock, M.A. (eds.) The Content Analysis Reader, pp. 60–67. Sage, Los Angeles (2009)
Fietkiewicz, K.J., Lins, E., Baran, K.S., Stock, W.S.: Inter-generational comparison of social media use: investigating the online behavior of different generational cohorts. In: Proceedings of the 49th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, pp. 3829–3838. IEEE Computer Society, Washington, DC (2016)
Schumann, L., Stock, W.G.: The information service evaluation (ISE) model. Webology 11(1), 1–20 (2014)
Acknowledgements
The data in this project were collected and coded by Aliaksandra Shutsko, Alon Borenshtein, Elisabeth Levin, Fabian Birghan, Jennifer Storms, Neil Suárez Rodríguez, Robert Hettenhausen, Sebastian Blaszczok. The supervisors of the project were Kaja J. Fietkiewicz and Wolfgang G. Stock. The author would like to thank all the participants of the project.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Shutsko, A. (2020). User-Generated Short Video Content in Social Media. A Case Study of TikTok. In: Meiselwitz, G. (eds) Social Computing and Social Media. Participation, User Experience, Consumer Experience, and Applications of Social Computing. HCII 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12195. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49576-3_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49576-3_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-49575-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-49576-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)