After the Supreme Court struck down Roe vs. Wade in June, Americans became more interested in abortion. Data from Google Trends, TV news trackers and polls confirm that voters are talking about reproductive rights now more than in years.
But not all Americans are watching the same debate. Baby boomers may stumble upon the abortion conversation while browsing Facebook or flipping through cable news channels. Generation Z Americans, born between 1997 and 2012, are more likely to open TikTok and watch their phones flash back and forth.
So, in an effort to understand what U.S. TikTok users (half of whom are under 30) are watching, we collected over 1,000 high-engagement viral videos tagged #Abortion and analyzed them, both by running stats and viewing posts.
We found two things, mainly: Pro-abortion rights posts get more views than anti-abortion videos, and the platform is almost perfectly designed to further divide us.
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The abortion debate was raging on TikTok long before Roe it fell.
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The basic content of these arguments is familiar: conservatives say that life begins at conception; Liberals say that abortion is a woman’s right and that banning it would have dire consequences.
But the nature of the conversation on TikTok is distinctive. TikTok allows people to “stitch” clips of other users into their posts, allowing creators to make a targeted barrage against another user. In our analysis, pro-choice creators were more likely to use this technique to react to anti-abortion videos, while anti-abortion posters engaged their opponents less often.
This frame shows a pro-life post that a pro-choice creator added to a new post to advocate for abortion by singing.
This user argues Roe it gives full control to women while leaving men out of reproductive decisions that directly affect them.
TikTok’s basic design — an endless stream of short videos so entertaining you can’t look away — encourages users to fill their arguments with emotion, humor, and urgency. That’s not all bad: abortion can be an emotional subject, and sometimes it’s appropriate to talk about the procedure with feeling.
But the resulting arguments are often based more on emotional impact than point-for-point engagement with the other side.
Comedian Greg Stone joked about conservatives, like his father, who are pro-life but support gun rights.
This pro-life video pointed out that DNA from a fetus could remain in the womb for decades.
The user created a play to show how she became a pro-choice activist and created urgency in the fight for abortion rights.
More worryingly, no company has the manpower to find every false or objectionable post. Some anti-abortion creators used infographics with misleading language and images, conflating Plan B and early birth control with late-term abortion. Some pro-choice users used vulgar language to stir up the emotions of the audience.
This clip uses a diagram of a late-stage fetus to make the case that abortion pills kill babies. Actually, these pills are used in the early stages of a pregnancy.
Actor Michael Rappaport compared Texas to the Taliban when the state banned abortion after six weeks, and used vulgar language to emphasize his anger.
As social media researchers and other data journalists have ably shown, TikTok’s algorithms track users, learn what they like, and deliver more and more to them. The app can provide politically interested users with an ever-increasing dose of partisanship and extremism.
The resulting debate is bifurcated and bitter: Liberals nail conservatives; conservatives preach to the choir; and the algorithm takes people to the echo chamber they already prefer. And when the TikTok debate breaks into real life, the tactics are simple, like hacking into a Texas abortion website or fooling the Supreme Court.
In an ideal world, the unique features of TikTok (high emotional impact, the ability to host a video discussion with other users) would provide an opportunity to enhance political discourse. That might be true for some users, and TikTok is arguably an engine for Gen Z activism.
But we don’t live in an ideal world, and Gen Z’s favorite platform could be dividing us even more.
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Source: news.google.com