Identity Roles and Sociality on TikTok: Performance in Hereditary Cancer Content (#BRCA and #Lynchsyndrome)

Abstract

Digital platforms have long been understood as important spaces where identity performance takes place with networks and interpersonal interaction forming the basis of many theoretical approaches to self. Due to TikTok’s distinctive technical structure, scholars have argued that processes of sociality and identity construction have changed, calling into question some of the founding principles of how we understand identity performance on social media. In this article, we critically engage with these debates by asking how identity is performed in TikTok content in the context of health and illness. Specifically, we explore identity performance in content on two hereditary cancer conditions: BReast CAncer (BRCA) and Lynch Syndrome, carriers of which have a much higher disposition to getting certain types of cancer in their lifetime. Through using computational data collection tools and conducting a qualitative content analysis, we find that identity is performed through the enactment of roles, all of which demonstrate how TikTok’s features still enable interpersonal and networked elements of self to emerge. This article contributes to knowledge on experiences of social media and hereditary cancer by shedding light on the kinds of identity performance that become most visible through ways of sociality shaped by powerful multimodal and algorithmic platforms such as TikTok. In so doing, it also provides unprecedented insight into what content users are exposed to when seeking information and support in relation to a hereditary cancer diagnosis on TikTok.