Do TikTok users in Asia use it for more educational purposes?

June 9, 2023 8:49 AM

I had a colleague mention a study recently in which the content on TikTok in Asia is educational.

I had a colleague mention a study recently in which the content on TikTok in Asia is educational, has serious political discussions, is used by intellectuals, etc. Whereas in the West it's basically nonsense, cats, food porn, etc. Has anyone seen research on this? Obviously it's the million dollar question at the moment, but I'm curious if there are any sources on that.

posted by winterportage to Computers & Internet (5 answers total)

There's plenty of educational and political content on TikTok, for everyone. Congressman Jeff Jackson, for instance, has a huge following.

I'm not on TikTok, but I am on Instagram where us olds get the 2 week old memes, and if you're getting cats, nonsense, and food, that's got more to do with your search history than the platform itself. That's not a dig, those things are great. I just personally get served a LOT of political, legal, and history content (crossposted TikTok to Reels) and it's all by US American creators.
posted by phunniemee at 9:27 AM on June 9, 2023 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Wanted to add- this question is about what content the algorithm prioritizes in Asia vs the West. Yes, there are different topics of content in both places but is there a way in which technologically the content is optimized differently? Not talking about on an anecdotal level. Is there evidence that in Asia algorithms are optimizing for serious content and in the West they are optimizing for dance trends and cat vids?
posted by winterportage at 9:40 AM on June 9, 2023

I got on TikTok because a friend was sending me interesting political and cultural stuff, and so it trained early on to mostly show me that. Even when it's heady, insightful stuff, it feels so addictive I only open it every few days.

For the first month or two, I did get these videos of incredibly charismatic Chinese villagers doing skilled traditional labor to chill tunes. That seemed to have a bit more of a directed agenda than most of my feed.
posted by bendybendy at 9:43 AM on June 9, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I always hear of this in context of there being time limits for use by children and teens in China (but not in the US), and the state promoting scientific content and civics (the latter considered propaganda by some) in the Chinese version, but not the US. Ie, what I've read is about differences in presentation, not how users use it. Here's one such article describing that. Here's another. It's not so hard to imagine that PRC would want to push "wholesome" content to its youth and not care if everyone else sees addictive garbage rise to the top. Then again, it's not so hard to imagine that anti-China voices are seriously overplaying any discrepancies.
posted by SaltySalticid at 9:52 AM on June 9, 2023 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Here's some scholarly work that discusses similarities and differences of the user experience. Here's another scholarly article.
posted by SaltySalticid at 10:03 AM on June 9, 2023 [2 favorites]