#TikTokActivism: Music and Sounds in Political Content

Abstract

TikTok has seen increasing numbers of users since its rebranding in 2018. Most known for memes, lip-sync, and dance videos, it is also a platform on which political struggles and activist movements are articulated through music and artistic performances.

This article analyzes activist TikToks and the use of music and sounds in them. Our findings are based on two ethnographic studies conducted in the summer of 2021, a video analysis of activist TikToks, and our experiences as consumers on the platform. Hence, this essay delves into the question of the role songs and sounds play in activist content.

In the data collection, the creators interviewed stated that the axis of their content is the activist or political message they want to convey. In this sense, music is integral to enabling the processes of creation, communication, and further reproduction of the content. For the creators, it assumes a supplementary role rather than being at the core. For this research, we work to integrate the results of these interviews and the findings obtained in the field with concepts such as performativity (Judith Butler and Alejandro Madrid), musical marks (Mark Cobussen), and iterability (Jacques Derrida), in addition to an ethnomusicological and music-sociological understanding (Thomas Turino, Julio Mendívil, and Tia DeNora). In this article we argue for both a “performatic” and a performative approach to the analysis, characterizing sounds and songs as musical marks with an iterable quality. We explore the link of these musical marks to corporeality in the articulation of the political message, the influence of this dynamic on performativity, and the processes that take place in the transmission and the further reproduction of the content.

Through this performative approach, we understand music as a means to analyze social and cultural processes and the musical mark as an essential element that has the capacity to navigate different contexts without acquiring a fixed meaning. This mark can be quoted, altered, and recontextualized, and it is because of this iterable character that it stimulates and enables forms of communication and reproduction of the activist message.