  Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are used for social
activism purposes, and TikTok is no different. We conducted 9 qualitative
semi-structured interviews with social activists who recently posted their
videos on TikTok to understand. This study presents an initial look into why
TikTok is used by social activists, and what processes they use to carry out
this work. The interviews revealed the following main patterns: (1) content
creation practices are typical and expected, (2) motivation and inspiration for
posting social activist content comes from a wide range of personal sources,
(3) social activism has communities on TikTok that provides encouragement and
discussion, (4) engagement and interaction with other activists and viewers is
a crucial part of content creation as well as social activism, and (5) the main
driving force behind picking TikTok over other platforms is the ability to
spread messages much farther with less effort. These findings provide insight
into the unique factors that TikTok brings for social activists and
corroborates previous findings in understanding how social activists use social
media for their purposes.
