Tiktok and science journalism in multiple steps and formats

Desciption

A few decades ago it was unimaginable to think of journalism outside of the paper pages, however, the technological and internet revolution has opened new spaces for the production, dissemination and consumption of general and specialized journalistic content. Similarly, digital socio networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have become extensions of newspapers, through which information of interest to each user is shared based on algorithms and big data.

In the last two years TikTok has been the app that has had the most downloads and various specialists attribute this achievement to its technical innovations: usability, the short format of the videos, the ease of producing content and its unpredictable algorithm for suggesting spots. The above has made the media (including the press), influencers and common users explore other opportunities to create short videos on topics that are trending, for example, recommendations for movies, places or food, finances, video games, tips cooking and science.

Let’s pay attention to this last topic, which has traditionally been marginalized in journalism by other priority sections such as economics and politics. The themes of science, technology and health have found in TikTok a safe space that converges with the experimentation of formats to present more attractive audiovisuals (switch from landscape to portrait video) and editing resources to juxtapose images and videos without the need for a screen Green, among several other editing tools you have.

The foregoing is part of a one-to-one communication that happens simultaneously on thousands of mobile devices, which contributes to positioning nano or micro influencers that operate through multi-step communication by being mediators between formal journalistic content and the creation of a suitable discourse to be “appetizing” in this digital social network. In this scenario, a content analysis is presented with an oriented sample that allows us to identify some distinctive features of this innovative way of producing, disseminating and consuming science journalism on the Internet.