News for (Me and) You: Exploring the Reporting Practices of Citizen Journalists on TikTok

Abstract

The social media platform TikTok is increasingly becoming an important space for sharing and finding news and information, especially for younger people. Most scholarly research examining news sharing on TikTok has focused on practices by professional journalists and news organizations; however, these are only a small percentage of the actors who make up the news information sharing ecosystem on the platform. In particular, citizen journalists play a large role in creating and disseminating news on TikTok. Thus, I interviewed 14 TikTok citizen journalists to understand their news reporting practices. Findings suggest TikTok citizen journalists are guided by the platform logics and concerns around misinformation in the content they post on the platform. This study contributes to the literature on the role of citizen journalists and social media in shaping news disseminated online.