You can’t reduce breaking news about decades old conflicts into viral TikTok videos without discarding years of context, nuance and generational pain.
And when TikTok is where 20% (and growing) of 18- to 24-year-olds are getting their news, we’re going to find ourselves in a serious mountain of shit.
@Daojoan Fran kly? I disagree.
I've gotten way _more_ nuanced discussion of the subject out of Tiktok than I have out of the major papers.
We've got ten minute videos talking about the intricate history. We've got thirty second drops of "here's some resources you need to understand this". We've got two minute current events drops with citations.
People are doing the work.
At the same time NYT and others are making gaffes in their "live coverage" because they're in a rush
@Daojoan Yeah, you don't use Tiktok via search. It's not the major mode.
@Daojoan What survey is this?
@aredridel via https://searchengineland.com/gen-z-tiktok-google-search-survey-431345
> The online survey, promoted through Her Campus Media [ a Gen Z media and college marketing company ] newsletters and social accounts, was conducted in August. It received 1,821 responses – 100% of respondents were from the U.S., 97% were female and 71% were college students (undergrad).
@hatpinhacker 100% of respondents were from the U.S., 97% were female and 71% were college students (undergrad).
Whoa. That's a heck of a sample.
@aredridel I was pretty surprised by it when I read it. That's a pretty narrow range of ages and of specific experience representing the majority of responses. I feel that it's odd for the article to extrapolate to all of Gen Z.
@hatpinhacker I mean, I'm not reading between the lines: this is the rigor you get from marketing companies unless they are absolutely fantastic. (and Her Campus Media isn't just marketing, it's hyper-niche, with a demographic to sell)
@aredridel I'm thinking of search engine land's article citing it
@hatpinhacker Oh. Yeah. That's surprising. It was pretty credulous.
@Daojoan I'm asking about the other end of the data: not what they use as a search engine, but the major mode of _using tiktok_; it's presuming that search is the dominant mode of information access, rather than asking what modes people use. Given that, yeah, you don't get good information about tiktok because while it has search, its search is bad and it's not really how you use it.
Researching this is pretty hard to do well. What's the source of data you're citing, btw?
I actually think we're in a weird space where search itself has had its credibility and utility increasingly atrophied, from personalization of results, removal of binary search options, the desire to never ever ever show "no results found", never mind the actual manipulations of SEO, and now LLM-generated text.
Not to say TikTok is groundbreakingly accurate or anything — but it is a mode shift, and I think asking questions with that possibility in mind is critical.
@aredridel Absolutely critical.