Jocelyn Steinke, Christine Gilbert, Amanda Coletti, Sara Holland Levin, Jiyoun Suk, Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch
{"title":"Women in STEM on TikTok: Advancing Visibility and Voice Through STEM Identity Expression","authors":"Jocelyn Steinke, Christine Gilbert, Amanda Coletti, Sara Holland Levin, Jiyoun Suk, Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch","doi":"10.1177/20563051241274675","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This study investigated portrayals of women in STEM on TikTok focusing on their self-presentation of identity and use of platform features to promote audience engagement. This quantitative content analysis examined TikTok posts ( N = 400) from a 3-month sample of 100 TikTok accounts by individuals identified as women in STEM. Results for STEM-focused posts showed that these content creators provided positive portrayals of their work as women in STEM and frequent displays of their STEM identity, particularly displays of STEM competence and self-recognition. However, findings also indicated that this TikTok community displayed other social group identities less frequently and used relatively few TikTok platform features that would likely enhance audience engagement. Results suggest that positive portrayals of women in STEM on TikTok are helpful for challenging gender-STEM stereotypes, but the dearth of displays of social group identities highlights a need for more diverse women in STEM role models on TikTok. In addition, the infrequent use of popular platform features appears to be a missed opportunity for broader audience engagement. Implications for social media science influencers, science communicators, and informal STEM outreach professionals are discussed.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":5.5000,"publicationDate":"2024-08-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Social Media + Society","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051241274675","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This study investigated portrayals of women in STEM on TikTok focusing on their self-presentation of identity and use of platform features to promote audience engagement. This quantitative content analysis examined TikTok posts ( N = 400) from a 3-month sample of 100 TikTok accounts by individuals identified as women in STEM. Results for STEM-focused posts showed that these content creators provided positive portrayals of their work as women in STEM and frequent displays of their STEM identity, particularly displays of STEM competence and self-recognition. However, findings also indicated that this TikTok community displayed other social group identities less frequently and used relatively few TikTok platform features that would likely enhance audience engagement. Results suggest that positive portrayals of women in STEM on TikTok are helpful for challenging gender-STEM stereotypes, but the dearth of displays of social group identities highlights a need for more diverse women in STEM role models on TikTok. In addition, the infrequent use of popular platform features appears to be a missed opportunity for broader audience engagement. Implications for social media science influencers, science communicators, and informal STEM outreach professionals are discussed.
期刊介绍:
Social Media + Society is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that focuses on the socio-cultural, political, psychological, historical, economic, legal and policy dimensions of social media in societies past, contemporary and future. We publish interdisciplinary work that draws from the social sciences, humanities and computational social sciences, reaches out to the arts and natural sciences, and we endorse mixed methods and methodologies. The journal is open to a diversity of theoretic paradigms and methodologies. The editorial vision of Social Media + Society draws inspiration from research on social media to outline a field of study poised to reflexively grow as social technologies evolve. We foster the open access of sharing of research on the social properties of media, as they manifest themselves through the uses people make of networked platforms past and present, digital and non. The journal presents a collaborative, open, and shared space, dedicated exclusively to the study of social media and their implications for societies. It facilitates state-of-the-art research on cutting-edge trends and allows scholars to focus and track trends specific to this field of study.