Are we turning into Facebook moms? Trust in TikTok after the pandemic

when you start believing every tiktok like your mom believes every facebook post - @mr.prada47 The pandemic changed our habits and forced us to move many of our daily activities online – from news gathering to socialisation. TikTok, a platform that was already experiencing growth amongst young people, became the most downloaded app of 2020. This was mainly because of the entertainment provided by the contents of the platform, but one of the elements that makes this phenomenon interesting is the way in which content creators and authorities used the platform to share information regarding the pandemic (Kale, 2020; Ostrovsky & Chen, 2020; Li et all, 2021; Basch et all, 2020), and the Black Lives Matter movement and protests that happened in June 2020 (Literat et all, 2022). The other element that has been central to research surrounding the platform is its recommendation algorithm and the way in which it impacts users’ experiences (Karizat et all, 2021; Schellewald, 2022). By carrying out an initial autoethnography of the TikTok for you page, as well as in depth conversations with users of the platform, a theme that seems to be emerging is the trust they have towards the information that is shared on the platform. The aim of this research is to understand if this trust was formed during “unprecedented times” or if it is simply a result of platform affordances, types of content and algorithmic recommendations. To understand this, we are conducting 20 in depth interviews with people aged 18-35 to understand what kind of relationship they have formed with TikTok, specifically focusing on the level of trust they have towards the content they find on the platform, their perception and understanding of their algorithm, what criteria they use to determine what to believe, and what this trust was built on.