When you think of TikTok, you often picture many Gen Z-ers creating bizarre lip-sync videos or comedy routines to entertain their friends and followers online. With 500 million users worldwide, it’s no wonder that this app has taken the digital world by storm.
For the uninitiated, TikTok is a free mobile app where users share short video clips, often set to music or dialogue from films and TV shows.
As with Snapchat before it, some news organisations have adopted TikTok and are using it in various ways.
Here are some examples:
The Washington Post
The WaPo launched its own TikTok account in May entitled, ‘We are a Newspaper’. The Post’s video producer Dave Jorgensen, has produced more than 120 videos for the account, amassing 220,000 followers and more than 7.5 million ‘hearts’, or likes. Jorgensen told CNN Business that the account’s goal was to engage with TikTok’s young viewers and help them become familiar with the Post’s newsroom.
The clips help viewers to familiarise themselves with the Post’s reporters and editors, using humour to show how a newsroom operates.
One video parodies the SAW horror film franchise to highlight the long hours journalists work. Jorgensen is shown being tied to his desk and needing to find a way to escape the impending news.
Good luck, everyone. pic.twitter.com/iTmRYnajdY
— Washington Post Universe Guy (@davejorgenson) October 31, 2019
Another video depicts the WaPo’s Power Up reporter Jacqueline Alemany, vibrantly going through the motions journalists take on when publishing a newsletter at 6am before heading back to sleep.
Today’s first @washingtonpost TikTok brought to you by @JaxAlemany and the Power Up newsletter. https://t.co/kTyFn257p5 pic.twitter.com/t8QNRZmJYm
— Washington Post Universe Guy (@davejorgenson) October 22, 2019
Jorgensen explained that he uses humour as a way to connect with viewers on a personal level.
“These are real reporters working very hard,” Jorgenson told CNN Business. “And, you know, they’re actually pretty relatable.”
It’s a smart strategy for audience engagement, but Gavin Allen, a lecturer in Digital Journalism at Cardiff University, commented that the Posts’ TikToks do not “equate to slinging news content.”
He says it is “behind-the-scenes fun — the kind of stuff you do while bored at work, rather than the work itself.
However, Jorgenson has said that he hopes TikTok will eventually become the new revenue stream for the WaPo. He also has plans to create five weekly posts, three being news-related and the other two being more fun, whilst still featuring the newspaper in some way.
Speaking to Journalism.co.uk he said, “People on this app are the people of the future, whether you like it or not. From a business perspective, I don’t know why you would ignore that.
“It’s a great creative space and a really collaborative space perfect for a newspaper.”
NBC News
The TikTok content produced by newsrooms is not all just memes or funny videos. NBC News produce TikToks to show snippets of news stories in the moment.
The channel uses the 15-20 second time frame of a typical TikTok to provide a quick visual overview of a news story for mobile audiences.
For instance, this video shows a large shipwrecked barge stuck at Niagara Falls for over 100 years coming loose during a severe storm.
NBC News’ Stayed Tuned
NBC also have a separate TikTok called NBC News’ Stay Tuned. The young-generation-targeted multiplatform show first launched on Snapchat in 2017, then spread to Instagram, and now uploads bits to TikTok four times a week.
Stayed Tuned’s executive producer Angie Grande explained that TikTok puts a light-hearted twist on big news content. For instance, on Snapchat they were able to do a full episode on the presidential debate. On TikTok, they played around with a video on how to pronounce the candidates’ names.
Stay Tuned also aims to pull videos that will start a conversation. These include a former softball player grandma who slugged a car thief, and a Californian woman who tossed a bag of puppies in a nearby rubbish bin.
Does TikTok work for journalists?
99 per cent of UK newsrooms are on the fence about using TikTok as a news-related platform. The Sun’s social media editor Martha Mills believes “it’s still very much seen as a ‘fun’ platform” and a source for “viral content and creating ‘influencers’.” The Metro’s social media editor Jay Jaffa however, believes TikTok would work best as a “behind-the-curtain format” for newsrooms and using it for more cheerful news stories.
There are issues with using the app in the newsroom. It is labour intensive, with Jorgensen saying he spends around an hour and a half each morning creating and editing a TikTok for that day.
Moreover, the app has not come about without its wider controversies. A Buzzfeed investigation documented the concerns over the app’s child safeguarding issues, which TikTok’s media section tried to counter. What’s more, TikTok was fined a record of $5.7 million by the US Federal Trade Commission for unlawfully collecting data on under-13s in a vicious child privacy battle.
Like many online apps, TikTok appears it will suit particular brands rather than ‘news’ overall. It’s part of the wider experience of newsrooms trying to learn the language of online platforms, and once they receive a sense of this they’ll do what they can to produce news content on it.
Until then, perhaps we’ll stick with the memes and dances.