User-Generated Short Video Content in Social Media. A Case Study of TikTok

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.