Women in STEM on TikTok: Advancing Visibility and Voice Through STEM Identity Expression

IF 5.5 1区文学 Q1 COMMUNICATION Social Media + Society Pub Date : 2024-08-16 DOI:10.1177/20563051241274675

Jocelyn Steinke, Christine Gilbert, Amanda Coletti, Sara Holland Levin, Jiyoun Suk, Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch

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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.

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TikTok 上的 STEM 女性：通过 STEM 特性表达提高能见度和话语权

本研究调查了 STEM 女性在 TikTok 上的形象，重点关注她们的自我身份展示以及使用平台功能促进受众参与的情况。这项定量内容分析从 100 个 TikTok 账户中抽取了 3 个月的样本，研究了 STEM 领域女性发布的 TikTok 帖子（N = 400）。以 STEM 为重点的帖子结果显示，这些内容创作者对其作为 STEM 领域女性的工作进行了积极的描述，并经常展示其 STEM 身份，尤其是 STEM 能力和自我认可的展示。不过，研究结果也表明，这个 TikTok 社区展示其他社会群体身份的频率较低，而且使用的 TikTok 平台功能相对较少，而这些功能可能会提高受众的参与度。研究结果表明，TikTok 上对 STEM 领域女性的正面描绘有助于挑战性别-STEM 的刻板印象，但社会群体身份展示的缺乏凸显了 TikTok 上需要更多不同的 STEM 领域女性榜样。此外，不经常使用流行的平台功能似乎也错失了让更多受众参与进来的机会。本文还讨论了社交媒体科学影响者、科学传播者和非正式的 STEM 外联专业人员的意义。

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来源期刊

Social Media + Society COMMUNICATION-

CiteScore

9.20

自引率

3.80%

发文量

111

审稿时长

12 weeks

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.