Native TikTok against the logic of elimination: Jenna M. Williams, Reconstituting Indigenous Identity on #NativeTikTok: Navigating narratives of erasure mediated by the ‘For You’ algorithm, MA dissertation, University of Chicago, 2022 | settler colonial studies blog

Native TikTok against the logic of elimination: Jenna M. Williams, Reconstituting Indigenous Identity on #NativeTikTok: Navigating narratives of erasure mediated by the ‘For You’ algorithm, MA dissertation, University of Chicago, 2022

30Aug22

Abstract: TikTok, an app which allows users to create, share, and consume short-video content, is largely considered to be a “cultural aspect” of the ongoing 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. With its skyrocketing popularity, TikTok is quickly surpassing other forms of social media to become the dominant digital platform for those under 30. Accordingly, physical and online communities have followed this digital shift. By understanding settler colonialism’s ‘logics of elimination,’ this research explores how Indigenous TikTok users in the United States have created a space, Native TikTok, to combat systemic contemporary and historical erasure of their people and identities. I argue that Native TikTok functions as a subaltern counterpublic in which Native users resist ‘master narratives’ by circulating counternarratives. Ultimately, I ask how Native identity is understood and enacted through TikTok’s mediative algorithm and examine how the resemiotization of viral memes acts a method for negotiating identity. This paper utilizes Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA) for a multilayered analytical structure and emphasizes the way Native TikTok users perceive, articulate, and define the technocultural space they inhabit.

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