Keeping Up with the World: TikTok’s News Hub

TikTok has become a popular platform to consume news but it has its positives and drawbacks

Navigating the News

As Israel-Hamas war has become a hot topic over the week, there were many independent journalists on TikTok post their videos to express their point of views on what’s happening during this tragic event. Some of them received more than 1 million views. Reading about this article has caught my attention because it resonates me. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, I was curious about what happened between those two countries. Watching news from traditional sources such as CNN or BBC wasn’t good enough for me to form my own opinion and to be sure I wasn’t being bias. So I turned to social media platforms to learn more about the conflict between two sides for a better understanding.

Leila Warah, a Palestinian American journalist living in a West Bank refugee camp, describing her experience and point of view on TikTok (1.2 million views)

Social Media News Consumption

It appears that social network platforms are becoming an integral part of life, with more people turning to these channels for news consumption. According to Pew Research Center, Americans get their news from Facebook (31%), YouTube (25%), TikTok (10%) to name a few. The popularity of consuming news from social media platforms are growing. TikTok is the fastest growing social network and 20% of 18 to 24 years old users use this platform as a news source to discover what’s happening in the world.

Data was retrieved on 2022 by surveying Americans

Weighing the Pros and Cons

Receiving news from social media platforms like TikTok is a great way to get multi-point perspectives unlike those traditional news sources where they sometimes feed bias information according to their company and country policies. However, there’s always a positive and negative aspects for using TikTok as a news consumption channel and here’s why.

Pros

1. What I like the most about using TikTok to watch the news is the authenticity it gives. The independent journalists can express and address freely to the audience based on their experiences without filtering it. They provide a genuine point of view in real time. Sometimes, I get a better insight on what’s going on than consuming traditional news sources.
2. The platform allows me to read comments and opinions from other people. I do find it very resourceful because I can learn a lot from them. Influencers including independent journalists can sometimes post their videos in ways that is very subjective but with people’s comments, they provide me with a broader outlook.
3. When consuming the news, I think it’s very important to hear both sides of their stories before jumping into conclusion. And TikTok has bunch of influencers and independent journalists on both sides of the stories. This circumstances enable me to form an unbiased viewpoint.

Cons

1. Because TikTok is a platform where people can post almost everything and sometimes it can be utilized in an immoral and harmful ways. To give you an example, there are many terrorist organizations take advantage in using social media platforms to threaten people by posting footages that are very disturbing. In that sense, it should be filtered or at least be censored.
2. Unlike traditional news source which obtained stories and reports from a reliable and credible resource, TikTok can pass on ranges of false claims to the audience because almost everybody can post everything on the platform. Therefore, it’s always crucial to have the ability to judge what’s real and fake.
3. Many social network platforms including TikTok work the same way when it comes to suggesting posts and videos based on user’s interest. Because of that, I might only receive news on what they think it’s relevant to me. This may cause me to form an opinion that is distorted and biased.

Social media platforms like TikTok are great sources to pick up news as I can get unfiltered and honest videos from influencers and independent journalists but they can be misleading sometimes. From my opinion, it would be better to access both traditional news outlets and social network platforms to gain a multi-perspective view. I also think that it’s very important to consume media thoroughly and have a critical eye.