Digital Labor on TikTok and Douyin Platforms: A Scoping Review

• Published in: Review of communication research Vol. 13; pp. 229 - 245
• Main Authors: Kung, Yuhsin, Wang, Yunwen, Li, Xiaoqin, Hatrick, Jessica, Liu, Weining, Wang, Qinglin, Liang, Jianqi, Liu, Yushi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Madrid Review of Communication Research 01.01.2025
• Subjects: Manual workers; Social media
• ISSN: 2255-4165; 2255-4165
• DOI: 10.52152/RCR.V13.15

The rapid, geographically dispersed uptake of TikTok and Douyin in past years has been coupled with “platformization” where platforms rise with an infrastructural, economic, and cultural model that permeates various economic sectors and living spaces. App users, who not only consume but also produce content, constitute a new form of “digital labor”. This scoping review responds to the rising interest in theorizing short-form video digital labor by consolidating recent research. We constructed an original database of articles published from 2016 to 2022 about TikTok/Douyin across eight databases (SCOPUS, Web of Science, ACM Digital Library, PubMed, Medline, Google Scholar, EBSCO Communication Source, PsycINFO) with two gray literature platforms (ClinicalTrials.gov, WHO’s International Clinical Trials Registry Platform). After identifying “digital labor” related papers in this database, we added publications from 2023 to 2025 on this topic from Google Scholar; 17 papers were analyzed. This scoping review identified six categories of “digital labor” (i.e., creative, visibility, emotional, platform, relational, and promotional) on TikTok/Douyin for elucidation and comparison. Summarizing the papers, we found the goals and situations (precarity/exploitation) of these digital laborers, and their practice performed on TikTok/Douyin to be concurrently discussed. Digital laborers on short-form video apps gravitate to four forms of capital (economic, social, cultural, and symbolic) to achieve personal value. Nevertheless, the platforms’ labor practices employ strategies that subject users to precarity. As these two platforms continue to evolve (and other platforms integrate short-form videos in systems), this review provides a conceptual roadmap for future research about digital labor on networked mobile platforms.