Abstract
In recent years, media has adapted to the logic of each new social network to respond to renewed consumption habits and journalists have developed new roles on these platforms. TikTok is an emerging platform with its own influencer culture and in which the main audiences are the millennial and centennial generations. The main objective of this study is to analyze the presence of journalists on TikTok through the type of content and strategies used in adapting to this platform. The research is based on methodological triangulation. First, a database of journalists on TikTok (<em>n</em><sub>1</sub> = 212) was developed and the profiles were reviewed. Second, a questionnaire survey (<em>n</em><sub>2</sub> = 63) was developed. Finally, a content analysis (<em>n</em><sub>3</sub> = 520) of profiles exceeding 100,000 followers was conducted. This research provides a first description of the activity of journalists on TikTok, where a variety of roles, usages, and strategies are identified, beyond those of their profession. They join the of-the-moment platform with different purposes (to inform, entertain, or introduce themselves) and targets (new audiences, young people, fans). Journalists adapt their presence to the TikTok social media logic, seeking a space of influence on a platform that is the natural habitat of younger generations.
Highlights
Social networks have transformed the communicational scenario, forcing the news media to adapt to their logic and reformulating the jour‐ nalistic model (Bell & Owen, 2017)
The main objective of the study is to identify the type(s) of content they produce and the strategies that journalists imple‐ ment in their adaptation to TikTok, a new scenario dom‐ inated by their own influencers in which they must fight for the attention of young audiences and attract them to their brands and content
Journalists have had to adapt to TikTok as an emerg‐ ing platform that is different from other social net‐ works because of its main audience, language, and logic
Summary
Social networks have transformed the communicational scenario, forcing the news media to adapt to their logic (van Dijck & Poell, 2013) and reformulating the jour‐ nalistic model (Bell & Owen, 2017). Media companies and professionals are faced with the need to join the trends of emerg‐ ing platforms to adapt to new content consumption habits. They have adapted to the ephemeral for‐ mats of Instagram (Vázquez‐Herrero et al, 2019), experi‐ mented with Snapchat to reach new audiences with their news (Lee, 2019), developed strategies in private and. TikTok is one of these new platforms, which has burst onto the international market with its own logic and language It is the seventh most used social net‐ work in the world (Hootsuite, 2021), and it became the first non‐Facebook app to reach 3 billion global down‐ loads (Chan, 2021). The interest in TikTok rests on the young, belonging to the millennial and centennial generations, reaching 24% of those under 35 years old (Newman et al, 2021)
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