Middle Eastern women influencers' interdependent/independent subjectification on Tiktok: feminist postdigital transnational inquiry

• Published in: Information, communication & society Vol. 25; no. 6; pp. 734 - 751
• Main Author: Hurley, Zoe
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Abingdon Routledge 26.04.2022; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Context; Discourses; Feminism; Meaning; Middle Eastern women; Social media; Sociocultural factors; Subjectification; TikTok; Transnationalism; Visual observation; Women
• ISSN: 1369-118X; 1468-4462
• DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2022.2044500

Subjectification has been defined as the formation of the subject via discourses while social media bundles audio-visual discourses that afford subjectification. However, what is meant by the 'subject' is not neutral and subjectification can differ according to cultural context. This study takes Middle Eastern women influencers' subjectification on TikTok as a case to illustrate postdigital transnational subjectification. The novel framework of feminist postdigital transnational inquiry is applied to the corpus assisted study of three Middle Eastern women influencers' short-form TikTok videos. The findings reveal observable audio-visual elements while embedding conceptual meanings surrounding subjectification. Discussion postulates subjectification on TikTok as living postdigital practices with transnational meanings both within and beyond their immediate context. It is suggested that subjectification could occur beyond regional, generational, traditional, fixed or essentialist terms. Theorising offers nuanced insights into the curatorial potential of TikTok for subjectification as consecutively interdependent with contextual issues, trends and deeper traditional audio-visual ontologies. At the same time, it suggests that platforms' transnational affordances in Global South contexts occur independently to Northcentric frameworks and interpretations.