REPRESENTATION OF TIKTOK IN U.S. NEWS AFTER THE NO TIKTOK ON GOVERNMENT DEVICES ACT
Main Article Content
Abstract
TikTok, the most downloaded application in the world for three consecutive years since 2020, has been the target of various bans from governments and organisations. Despite widespread media coverage of such events, the representation of TikTok therein remains underexplored by linguists. This study therefore attempts to examine how TikTok is linguistically represented in U.S. television news after President Joe Biden signed the No TikTok on Government Devices Act into law. The Systemic Functional Linguistics, elaborated in Halliday and Matthiesen (2014), was employed as the analytical framework. The findings revealed that news coverage predominantly uses Material processes, followed by Relational processes. Mental and Verbal processes rank third and fourth, while Existential and Behavioural processes have rather low frequency. Regarding their subtypes, Identifying Relational and Cognitive Mental processes are more prevalent in negative representations, while Attributive Relational and Emotive Mental processes occur more often in positive representations. These transitivity patterns contribute to five main portrayals of TikTok, including “TikTok is a scrutiny and ban target”, “TikTok is a cybersecurity threat”, “TikTok is the Trojan horse of the Chinese Communist Party”, “TikTok is a must-have for many”, and “TikTok is a sales driving force”.
Article Details
Keywords
Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), transitivity system, news, representation, TikTok
References
Aleksandric, M. (2023, February 21). 10+ TikTok statistics for 2023: users, engagement & revenue. FinMasters. https://finmasters.com/tiktok-statistics/
Aqsa, Yasmin, T., & Qureshi, A. M. (2022). A corpus-assisted study of linguistic features of Pakistani English newspaper headlines. Pakistan Social Sciences Review, 6(2), 368-379. https://ojs.pssr.org.pk/journal/article/view/142
Avdeeff, M. K. (2021). TikTok, Twitter, and platform-specific technocultural discourse in response to Taylor Swift’s LGBTQ+ allyship in ‘You Need to Calm Down.’ Contemporary Music Review, 40(1), 78-98. https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2021.1945225
Dijk, T. A. van. (2013). News as discourse. Routledge.
Duriant, A., & Lambrou, M. (2009). Language and media. Routledge.
Eriksson Krutrök, M., & Åkerlund, M. (2023). Through a white lens: Black victimhood, visibility, and whiteness in the Black Lives Matter movement on TikTok. Information, Communication & Society, 26(10), 1996-2014. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2065211
Fowler, R. (2013). Language in the news: Discourse and ideology in the press. Routledge.
Haig, E. (2012). A critical discourse analysis and systemic functional linguistics approach to measuring participant power in a radio news bulletin about youth crime. Studies in Media and Society, 4, 45-73.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1961). Categories of the theory of grammar. WORD, 17(2), 241-292. https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.1961.11659756
Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2014). Halliday’s introduction to functional grammar (Fourth Edition). Routledge.
Heyang, T., & Martin, R. (2022). Teaching through TikTok: a duoethnographic exploration of pedagogical approaches using TikTok in higher dance education in China and Norway during a global pandemic. Research in Dance Education, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/14647893.2022.2114446
Hine, C. (2020). The evolution and diversification of Twitter as a cultural artefact in the British press 2007–2014. Journalism Studies, 21(5), 678-696. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2020.1719369
Howe, C. (2023, April 13). Fox News most trusted and most watched even after Dominion revelations, latest poll shows. Mediaite. https://www.mediaite.com/tv/fox-news-most-trusted-and-most-watched-even-after-dominion-revelations-latest-poll-shows/
Ingram, D. (2022, December 30). Biden signs TikTok ban for government devices amid security concerns. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/tiktok-ban-biden-government-college-state-federal-security-privacy-rcna63724
Kang, C. (2019, February 27). F.T.C. hits Musical.ly with record fine for child privacy violation. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/technology/ftc-tiktok-child-privacy-fine.html
Koetsier, J. (2021a, January 7). Here are the 10 most downloaded apps of 2020. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/01/07/here-are-the-10-most-downloaded-apps-of-2020/
Koetsier, J. (2021b, December 27). Top 10 most downloaded apps and games of 2021: TikTok, Telegram big winners. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/12/27/top-10-most-downloaded-apps-and-games-of-2021-tiktok-telegram-big-winners/
Koetsier, J. (2022, January 4). 10 most downloaded apps of 2022: Facebook down, Spotify up, TikTok stable, CapCut keeps growing. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2023/01/04/top-10-most-downloaded-apps-of-2022-facebook-down-spotify-up-tiktok-stable-capcut-keeps-growing/
Kumar, A. (2023). State nationalism or popular nationalism? Analysing media coverage of TikTok ban on mainstream Indian TV news channels. Media Asia, 50(4), 616-632. https://doi.org/10.1080/01296612.2023.2212507
Kumar, A., & Thussu, D. (2023). Media, digital sovereignty and geopolitics: the case of the TikTok ban in India. Media, Culture & Society, 45(8), 1583-1599. https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437231174351
Lavid, J., Arús, J., & Moratón, L. (2012). Genre realized in theme: the case of news reports and commentaries. Discours. Revue de Linguistique, Psycholinguistique et Informatique. A Journal of Linguistics, Psycholinguistics and Computational Linguistics, 10. https://doi.org/10.4000/discours.8623
Lewis, J., & Melendez-Torres, G. J. (2024). Prep-Tok: a queer critical discourse analysis of TikToks regarding HIV-related pre-exposure prophylaxis. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 26(4), 449-465. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2023.2224414
Lin, Y. (2023). Critical discourse analysis of news reports on TikTok. International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation, 6(10), 71–75. https://doi.org/10.32996/ijllt.2023.6.10.10
Loewen, S., & Godfroid, A. (2019). Advancing quantitative research methods. In The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in Applied Linguistics. Routledge.
Maheshwari, S., & Holpuch, A. (2023, August 16). Why countries are trying to ban TikTok. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/article/tiktok-ban.html
Miao, W., Huang, D., & Huang, Y. (2023). More than business: the de-politicisation and re-politicisation of TikTok in the media discourses of China, America and India (2017–2020). Media International Australia, 186(1), 97–114. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X211013919
McLean, J., Southerton, C., & Lupton, D. (2023). Young people and TikTok use in Australia: digital geographies of care in popular culture. Social & Cultural Geography, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2023.2230943
Overholser, G., & Jamieson, K. H. (2005). The press. Oxford University Press.
Piskorski, J., Stefanovitch, N., Nikolaidis, N., Da San Martino, G., & Nakov, P. (2023). Multilingual multifaceted understanding of online news in terms of genre, framing, and persuasion techniques. In A. Rogers, J. Boyd-Graber, & N. Okazaki (Eds.), Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) (pp. 3001–3022). Association for Computational Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2023.acl-long.169
Porto, M. P. (2007). Frame diversity and citizen competence: towards a critical approach to news quality. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 24(4), 303–321. https://doi.org/10.1080/07393180701560864
Sako, N. (2021). Facebook in the news. A mixed-method study of how Swedish public service news represent Facebook. [Master’s thesis, Gothenburg University]. Gothenburg University Library. http://hdl.handle.net/2077/68196
Scatton, S. (2023). TikTok risk or threat? Competing narratives about risk and threats in the US case. [Master’s thesis, Umeå University]. Umeå University Library. https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-214460
Schellewald, A. (2023). Understanding the popularity and affordances of TikTok through user experiences. Media, Culture & Society, 45(8). https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437221144562
Shiryaeva, T. A., Arakelova, A. A., Tikhonova, E. V., & Mekeko, N. M. (2020). Anti-, Non-, and Dis-: the linguistics of negative meanings about Youtube. Heliyon, 6(12), e05763. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e05763
Statham, S. (2022). Critical discourse analysis: a practical introduction to power in language. Routledge.
Wahl-Jorgensen, K., & Hanitzsch, T. (2009). The handbook of journalism studies. Routledge.
Yu, Y. (2022). Resisting foreign hostility in China’s English-language news media during the COVID-19 crisis. Asian Studies Review, 46(2), 254-271. https://doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2021.1947969
Zeng, J., & Abidin, C. (2021). ‘#OkBoomer, time to meet the Zoomers’: studying the memefication of intergenerational politics on TikTok. Information, Communication & Society, 24(16), 2459-2481. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2021.1961007
Zhu, Y. (2020). The expectation of TikTok in international media: a critical discourse analysis. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 8(12), 136–148. https://doi.org/10.4236/jss.2020.812012
Aqsa, Yasmin, T., & Qureshi, A. M. (2022). A corpus-assisted study of linguistic features of Pakistani English newspaper headlines. Pakistan Social Sciences Review, 6(2), 368-379. https://ojs.pssr.org.pk/journal/article/view/142
Avdeeff, M. K. (2021). TikTok, Twitter, and platform-specific technocultural discourse in response to Taylor Swift’s LGBTQ+ allyship in ‘You Need to Calm Down.’ Contemporary Music Review, 40(1), 78-98. https://doi.org/10.1080/07494467.2021.1945225
Dijk, T. A. van. (2013). News as discourse. Routledge.
Duriant, A., & Lambrou, M. (2009). Language and media. Routledge.
Eriksson Krutrök, M., & Åkerlund, M. (2023). Through a white lens: Black victimhood, visibility, and whiteness in the Black Lives Matter movement on TikTok. Information, Communication & Society, 26(10), 1996-2014. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2022.2065211
Fowler, R. (2013). Language in the news: Discourse and ideology in the press. Routledge.
Haig, E. (2012). A critical discourse analysis and systemic functional linguistics approach to measuring participant power in a radio news bulletin about youth crime. Studies in Media and Society, 4, 45-73.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1961). Categories of the theory of grammar. WORD, 17(2), 241-292. https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.1961.11659756
Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2014). Halliday’s introduction to functional grammar (Fourth Edition). Routledge.
Heyang, T., & Martin, R. (2022). Teaching through TikTok: a duoethnographic exploration of pedagogical approaches using TikTok in higher dance education in China and Norway during a global pandemic. Research in Dance Education, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/14647893.2022.2114446
Hine, C. (2020). The evolution and diversification of Twitter as a cultural artefact in the British press 2007–2014. Journalism Studies, 21(5), 678-696. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2020.1719369
Howe, C. (2023, April 13). Fox News most trusted and most watched even after Dominion revelations, latest poll shows. Mediaite. https://www.mediaite.com/tv/fox-news-most-trusted-and-most-watched-even-after-dominion-revelations-latest-poll-shows/
Ingram, D. (2022, December 30). Biden signs TikTok ban for government devices amid security concerns. NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/tiktok-ban-biden-government-college-state-federal-security-privacy-rcna63724
Kang, C. (2019, February 27). F.T.C. hits Musical.ly with record fine for child privacy violation. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/27/technology/ftc-tiktok-child-privacy-fine.html
Koetsier, J. (2021a, January 7). Here are the 10 most downloaded apps of 2020. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/01/07/here-are-the-10-most-downloaded-apps-of-2020/
Koetsier, J. (2021b, December 27). Top 10 most downloaded apps and games of 2021: TikTok, Telegram big winners. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2021/12/27/top-10-most-downloaded-apps-and-games-of-2021-tiktok-telegram-big-winners/
Koetsier, J. (2022, January 4). 10 most downloaded apps of 2022: Facebook down, Spotify up, TikTok stable, CapCut keeps growing. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2023/01/04/top-10-most-downloaded-apps-of-2022-facebook-down-spotify-up-tiktok-stable-capcut-keeps-growing/
Kumar, A. (2023). State nationalism or popular nationalism? Analysing media coverage of TikTok ban on mainstream Indian TV news channels. Media Asia, 50(4), 616-632. https://doi.org/10.1080/01296612.2023.2212507
Kumar, A., & Thussu, D. (2023). Media, digital sovereignty and geopolitics: the case of the TikTok ban in India. Media, Culture & Society, 45(8), 1583-1599. https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437231174351
Lavid, J., Arús, J., & Moratón, L. (2012). Genre realized in theme: the case of news reports and commentaries. Discours. Revue de Linguistique, Psycholinguistique et Informatique. A Journal of Linguistics, Psycholinguistics and Computational Linguistics, 10. https://doi.org/10.4000/discours.8623
Lewis, J., & Melendez-Torres, G. J. (2024). Prep-Tok: a queer critical discourse analysis of TikToks regarding HIV-related pre-exposure prophylaxis. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 26(4), 449-465. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2023.2224414
Lin, Y. (2023). Critical discourse analysis of news reports on TikTok. International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation, 6(10), 71–75. https://doi.org/10.32996/ijllt.2023.6.10.10
Loewen, S., & Godfroid, A. (2019). Advancing quantitative research methods. In The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in Applied Linguistics. Routledge.
Maheshwari, S., & Holpuch, A. (2023, August 16). Why countries are trying to ban TikTok. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/article/tiktok-ban.html
Miao, W., Huang, D., & Huang, Y. (2023). More than business: the de-politicisation and re-politicisation of TikTok in the media discourses of China, America and India (2017–2020). Media International Australia, 186(1), 97–114. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X211013919
McLean, J., Southerton, C., & Lupton, D. (2023). Young people and TikTok use in Australia: digital geographies of care in popular culture. Social & Cultural Geography, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2023.2230943
Overholser, G., & Jamieson, K. H. (2005). The press. Oxford University Press.
Piskorski, J., Stefanovitch, N., Nikolaidis, N., Da San Martino, G., & Nakov, P. (2023). Multilingual multifaceted understanding of online news in terms of genre, framing, and persuasion techniques. In A. Rogers, J. Boyd-Graber, & N. Okazaki (Eds.), Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) (pp. 3001–3022). Association for Computational Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2023.acl-long.169
Porto, M. P. (2007). Frame diversity and citizen competence: towards a critical approach to news quality. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 24(4), 303–321. https://doi.org/10.1080/07393180701560864
Sako, N. (2021). Facebook in the news. A mixed-method study of how Swedish public service news represent Facebook. [Master’s thesis, Gothenburg University]. Gothenburg University Library. http://hdl.handle.net/2077/68196
Scatton, S. (2023). TikTok risk or threat? Competing narratives about risk and threats in the US case. [Master’s thesis, Umeå University]. Umeå University Library. https://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-214460
Schellewald, A. (2023). Understanding the popularity and affordances of TikTok through user experiences. Media, Culture & Society, 45(8). https://doi.org/10.1177/01634437221144562
Shiryaeva, T. A., Arakelova, A. A., Tikhonova, E. V., & Mekeko, N. M. (2020). Anti-, Non-, and Dis-: the linguistics of negative meanings about Youtube. Heliyon, 6(12), e05763. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e05763
Statham, S. (2022). Critical discourse analysis: a practical introduction to power in language. Routledge.
Wahl-Jorgensen, K., & Hanitzsch, T. (2009). The handbook of journalism studies. Routledge.
Yu, Y. (2022). Resisting foreign hostility in China’s English-language news media during the COVID-19 crisis. Asian Studies Review, 46(2), 254-271. https://doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2021.1947969
Zeng, J., & Abidin, C. (2021). ‘#OkBoomer, time to meet the Zoomers’: studying the memefication of intergenerational politics on TikTok. Information, Communication & Society, 24(16), 2459-2481. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2021.1961007
Zhu, Y. (2020). The expectation of TikTok in international media: a critical discourse analysis. Open Journal of Social Sciences, 8(12), 136–148. https://doi.org/10.4236/jss.2020.812012