How to Be a Military Spouse: Short-Form Video and the New Genre of Wife Content

Abstract

Military spouses have frequently turned to social media platforms to navigate the complexities of military life. As civilians who are connected to, but not formally part of, the military, they experience many of the impacts of service and can feel unseen and unsupported. This paper draws on a qualitative analysis of TikTok and Instagram content produced by military spouses to reveal how this social media content serves as both a performative space and an instructional network, where spouses navigate the tension between seeking visibility and community support while reinforcing the very normative expectations of military wifehood that contribute to their marginalization. Content creators navigate and reproduce this tension through humor, satire and candid revelations to both challenge their invisibility and produce constraining norms. This analysis contributes to broader social media discourses of how social media platforms mediate identity performance, transformed by the communicative affordances of short-form video platforms.