Gender, Ethnicity, and Age on TikTok: Content Analysis of Ecuadorian Tiktokers

Abstract

The social network TikTok has seen significant growth since its launch in 2016. It currently has more than one billion users worldwide. In the case of Ecuador, the platform experienced an increase of more than 30% in users from September 2022 to the first quarter of 2024. Given this revealing panorama, this study aims to know what type of content is being disseminated and what differences in relation to gender, age and ethnicity, are found in the videos uploaded by Ecuadorian tiktokers. Using the content analysis methodology, 1,865 videos from 19 Ecuadorian TikTokers, between 18 and 36 years old, with more than 800,000 subscribers, were studied. Likewise, the Pearson correlation coefficient was applied with the Chi Square test to analyze whether there is a correlation between the three variables and the types of content. The results show that the most popular content corresponds to the categories of music, humor and scenes of everyday life. There is a presence of Tiktokers over 30 years old, which means that TikTok is ceasing to be a platform exclusively for teenagers, evolving towards more adult generations. The results revealed that female TikTokers have a greater following in relation to the number of subscribers and content. The data in relation to ethnicity reflects a statistical correlation that allows us to confirm that there are differences in the productions between indigenous and mestizo tiktokers.