University of Perpetual Help System Laguna - JONELTA

Basic Education Department – Senior High School

FAME IN A MINUTE: EXPLORING THE WORLD OF TIKTOKERS

A Thesis
Presented To
The Faculty of the Senior High School
University of Perpetual Help System Laguna
Sto. Niño, Biñan City, Laguna

In Partial Fulfillment
Of the Requirements for the Subject
Practical Research 1

by

Almario, Ma. Abbychel

Apelo, Khim
Geronimo, Jan Cris
Nilles, Jiscel
Sunido, Margaratte Jane
Valdemor, Diane
Zapata, Ryshian

January 2021
 University of Perpetual Help System Laguna - JONELTA
Basic Education Department – Senior High School

Chapter 1
THE PROBLEM AND ITS SETTING

Introduction

TikTok is a famous social media app in the world. This app is a popular worldwide

destination for creating short videos for mobile devices in Asia, the USA, and other parts of the

world. It appeared from the creators of an app called Musically. TikTok, also known as Douyin

in China, was launched in September 2016 and is supported by Byte Dance (Lauren Hallanan,

2018). TikTok's goal is to "inspire creativity and bring joy" (TikTok, 2020). It is based on User-

generated Content (UGC) where users build their own content to post artistic, short-lived videos

featuring a number of different content such as short lip-sync, dance, gaming, DIY, food videos,

science experiments, and visual memes. One of the most popular UGC modes on the website is

the #challenges. Its rich content has made the site highly successful (Xu et al., 2019). TikTok is

accessible in 155 countries as of 2019 (Apptrace, 2019). TikTok has started a modern trend

among teenagers, allowing users to choose to create and share short videos of lengths ranging

from 15 to 60 seconds, as well as a collaboration where they can "duet" with someone by

responding to their video, which leads to a chain of unlimited responses.

According to Sensor Tower (2020), the latest Tiktok figures as of April 2020, more than

two billion times worldwide in both the Apple App Store and Google Play have been

downloaded. Tiktok has 69% of users between the ages of 16 and 24 (Sloan & Rittenhouse,

2019). Research has shown that social media can, to some extent, promote information

exchange by offering social connections, experience sharing channels, relationship building and

networking tools, more on-going opportunities for observation, and mutual rapid trust. (Panahi

et al., 2012). Since TikTok was established to attract audience attention, it has reached through

entertainment, science, music, and fashion, as well as mobile Internet technology as the main

focus. Based on the personality traits and interests of young people, Tiktok evokes the
 University of Perpetual Help System Laguna - JONELTA
Basic Education Department – Senior High School

aspirations of self-expression of today's people to help them realize their personal values and

develop their creativity (Yang et al., 2019). Short video platforms have become a popular form

of social media application for entertainment content sharing among thousands of generations

(Patrick, 2018). Tiktok has 800 million active users worldwide (DataPortal, 2020) in reality,

TikTok users consume an average of 52 minutes a day on the website (BusinessofApps, 2019).

According to a one-month survey of TikTok users' behavior, 68% watch other people's

videos, and 55% upload their own videos (Globalwebindex, 2019). More than 1 million videos

were watched per day in a year (Influencermarketinghub, 2018). Through the process of building

video content permanently, some users are slowly gaining more followers or recognition from

the community. Recognized users of these communities are known as "microcelebrities" or

"influencers." The "Microcelebrity" is introduced by Senft, which regularly manages its platform

methods to increase its popularity among consumers. This includes self-branding techniques,

such as "curating, recurring and recycling" videos to present themselves as what they think is the

best way to do it (Senft 2008, 349). They brought their followers together by telling their

personal life and lifestyle through pictures and text, interacting with their audience online and

offline, and marketing their followers by inserting native advertising in posts to blog or social

media articles (Abidin, 2015).

As a platform that embraces real human experience, TikTok stimulates users' imagination by

creating quick and easy-to-operate user interfaces and accessible and practical editing tools. For

TikTok, seeing how many young, elderly, wild, and free people use their expertise in mobile

tools to express themselves with its uploaded 1-minute video content, the effect of the app on

people's lives is one of the hundreds of ways that shows how famous and growing the app can be

for future development as time goes by.