Ephemeral aesthetics and digital self-presentation in adolescents and young adults on TikTok. Marta Ezquerra Supervisor: Mar Guerrero-Pico Academic Year 2022/23 Final Project of the MA in Digital Culture and Emerging Media, Department of Communication Universitat Pompeu Fabra Basic research - PhD proposal Abstract: Online self-presentation involves a crescent need to prove oneself worthy of external attention as a response to content overabundance. In this context, social media platforms such as TikTok are experiencing an explosion of aesthetics, often hyper-specific niches that are popularized through the Internet for progressively shorter periods. Aesthetics correspond to subcultures that promulgate a certain lifestyle generating communities of young users around them. However, the hypersegmentation and fugacity exhibited by these current trends seem to clash head-on with a constant quest to build a defined and unique onlinePresence. This research aims to explore from a multi-method qualitative approach the effects of the ephemeral aesthetics on adolescents’ and young adults’ self-representation on TikTok, and to analyze the relationship between platformization and “ephemeral aesthetics”, considering its impact on their selfrepresentation. The purpose is to provide a closer look at under-studied TikTok self-representation phenomena prioritizing participants’ perspectives as a source of inquiry. Keywords: Ephemeral aesthetics, internet niches, self-presentation, gender, identity, platformization, algorithms, quantification, social media, TikTok. 1. Introduction During adolescence and youth, there arises a need for identification and self-affirmation, often as part of a group, Subcultures and urban tribes as well as the need for identity construction have evolved since the beginning of the 20th century, when the emergence of the middle class and the conquest of rights for minors began to grant more freedom to adolescents and young people, who could since then become more aware of themselves (Rubio & San Martin, 2012, p. 197). Currently, identity construction in social networks has reached a far more complex level (Hollenbaugh, 2021, p, 80). The search for external validation and the desire for recognition creates the need to prove oneself worthy of external time and attention in social networks. To achieve this, there is a need to appear "unique" and authentic (Lockhart-Hourigan, 2021) (Boyd, 2007, p. 220) on platforms where an overabundance of content reigns. Each user struggles for attention in a saturated environment (Myllylahti, 2020) (Kessous, 2015, n. p.), and thus emerges the urge to create ‘one’s own “brand”, with which to compete with the rest of individuals, thus imposing the ‘commoditization of the individual and his identity (Cijsouw, 2021, p. 13). Cultivating the online presence forces us to redefine the individual not by how he is but by how he is in relation to the rest of the content. In parallel, social networks are experiencing an explosion of cores, which were bom as labels to name certain aesthetics, often hyper-specific, that are popularized through the Intemet for progressively shorter periods of time, such as cottagecore' or elfcore’. These aesthetics transcend their more literal aesthetic sense and correspond to subcultures that promulgate a certain lifestyle, generating communities of young users around them (Soto, 2022, p, 199) (Garcia Garcia, 2022, p. 19). However, the hypersegmentation and fugacity exhibited by these current trends seem to clash head-on with the present integration of certain aesthetics in self-representation and in the configuration of an online personality. In this context, archetypes are broken down into specific niches and almost infinite categories with which social network users, especially young people and teenagers, seek to build a defined online presence. The first objective of this research is to explore the effects of the so-called "ephemeral aesthetics" on the selfrepresentation of adolescents and youngadults between 16 and 22 years old on TikTok. The second main objective is to analyze the relationship between the platformization and the proliferation of ephemeral aesthetics, as well as the impact they generate in the self-representation of young people and adolescents in social networks. This research aims to provide a closer look at the phenomena of online self-representation and to boost further understanding of an object of study, Tiktok communities, that despite garnering researchers’ interest in recent years (Tiktok Cultures Research Network, n.d.) still has potential for new approaches. Given the somewhat novelty of the platform and the relatively scarce academic knowledge about users’ self-presentation as part of a TikTok ‘Cottagecore is an aesthetic characterized for romanticizing the country and stay-at-home mum, lifestyle. ” Elfcore aesthetic seeks to adopt the physical appearance and mysticism of an elf community, this study intends to prioritize the participant's perspective as a source of inquiry 2. Research design The objectives and questions of the present research are organized as follows: Main objectives 1. To explore the effects of the so-called "ephemeral aesthetics" on the self-representation of adolescents and young adults between 16 and 22 years old on TikTok 2. To analyze the possible relationship between platformization and “ephemeral aesthetics", and its impact on adolescents and young adults’ self-representation on Tiktok. Specific objectives: 1. Identify and define the most common types of “ephemeral aesthetics” on TikTok. What are “ephemeral aesthetics"? How can they be classified? 2. Analyze the values and gender stereotypes promoted by these contents. What kind of values do “ephemeral aesthetics” promote? What kind of gender stereotypes do they convey?3. Explore how 16 to 22 year olds receive the promoted values and stereotypes on TikTok and analyze possible gender differences in reception How does the promotion of “ephemeral aesthetics” influence the selF-representation of young women who consume or create such content? How does the promotion of “ephemeral aesthetics” influence the selF-representation of young men who consume or create such content? 4, To analyze how platformization logics are enacted in the production of ephemeral aesthetic content on TikTok by young people between 16 and 22 years old. What strategies do young people use to gain visibility and differentiate themselves? How do algorithms shape the self-representation of teenagers and young adults? The research will use a multi-method qualitative approach consisting of four different stages to address the aforementioned objectives and questions. Data extraction will be carried out using the following methods: a) an online exploratory questionnaire to detect the aesthetics to analyze and possible participants for participatory workshops and semi-structured interviews; b) video scraping of TikTok videos using aesthetics-related hashtags; c) participatory workshops to gather experiential evidence of teenagers’ and young adults’ online practices in terms of self-representation on TikTok; and d) semi-structured interviews, to expand the data from workshops and deepen the knowledge of particular issues that may arise within them, Regarding data analysis, the development of content analysis and visual semiotic analysis of TikTok videos will aim to identify the most common types of ephemeral aesthetics on TikTok, and detect their values and gender stereotypes promoted. Secondly, a thematic analysis of data extracted through participatory workshops and semi-structured interviews will explore how 16 to 22-year-olds receive the promoted values and stereotypes on TikTok and analyze possible gender differences in reception. 3. Theoretical framework 3.1. Youth and online self-presentation ‘The presentation of the self has been subject of broad studies along history. In Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, comerstone of the scholarship related to this very issue, Goffman (1959) compared the social presentation to the performance of a certain role in a theatrical representation. Goffman noted that during social interactions, the individual may deeply involve his ego in his identification with a particular role, establishment and group. An adaptation of the self into a certain role as a response to social demands, by accentuatingthe aspects of the self that better match the norms of that social group (Siibak, 2010, p. 405). Tice adds that self-concept changes as a consequence of intrapersonal factors. Individuals internalize their recent behavior in such a way that they contemplate themselves as real possessors of those aspects of their interactions and self presentation (1992, p. 449). Other theorists align with Goffman and attribute an added social implication to this behavior, outlining that the process of assimilation of the self-representation in the individual's behavior contributes to generate public commitment (Choi, 2020, p.6). In 1985, Joshua Meyrowitz proposed to transcend Goffman’s setting, understood until then as the physical space of social interaction, in order to frame those roles we perform digitally. He suggests the apparition of new publics and arenas, as well as the potential changes of social behavior caused by electronic media. In this digital context, Meyrowitz refers to the merging of group experiences and new group identities, which are based on a “shared but special information system" (Meyrowitz, 1985, p.39). The construction of self identity becomes increasingly important during adolescence. As their interrelationships with their peers increase, their influence augments, and when there arise discrepancies between the rules of the home and those of the group, teenagers tend to be more accepting of the latter (Kohlberg, 1969, p.95). Ito (2010) considers adolescents’ peers as those “to whom youth look to develop their sense of self, reputation, and status” (p. 16). Thus, teenagers adopt breakaway styles, praised by their peers while rejected by their parents, with the intention of differentiating themselves, taking control over their self-representation and exploring new identities (boyd, 2014), According to boyd (2010, p. 114), the display of new dimensions of oneself made possible by the platforms also gives rise to new modes of public scrutiny to which the individual is subjected. In this sense, the reinforcement of peer-to-peer relationships that emerges during adolescence transfers their dynamics to the digital environment. Although the nature of these social practices remains the same, the intensity of the engagement in peer-based status negotiations and cultural identities development increases in digital media . Nowadays this dramatization of the self is portrayed graphically and everyday throughout social media. Stephen Marche (2012) argued that Facebook is a self-reflector platform that forces the individual to constantly think about his own representation, anticipating a phenomenon that would later be reproduced in the rest of SNS. As Kay (2018) outlined, the influence of social context in adolescents and young adults’ self-representalion is highly intensified on the intemet, as social validation acknowledgment is made manifest through quantifiable feedback. Despite this, identity doesn't work the same way across the different online environments, but instead, users adapt their self-representation to the perceived social norms present in each platform (boyd, 2014). Under the main purpose of image control (Hemnandez-Serrano et al., 2022), adolescents and young adults present themselves in a faceted way through each social networking site, taking advantage of its respective affordances. For instance, Choi and Williams (2020) found that stories use was associated with more sincere self-presentations, whereas posts use was linked to more idealized self-presentations. Choi considers ephemerality as an important social media affordance alongside permanence, since brevity promotes less rigorous and elaborate self-representation as opposed to the persistence of the feed posts. Thus, the user adopts different dynamics depending on the perceived social norms in the user community.3.2. TikTok’s aesthetics and self-presentation The online publics, which boyd (2014) describes as those communities built around shared identities and common social practices, become “networked publics". These are new online spaces in which adolescents and young people try to belong, generating their own space in which to socialize. Users’ activity in pursuit of creating online communities in social media is baptized as ‘participatory culture’, which encompasses the new forms of cultural production and media-sharing that have materialized since the beginning of the internet era (Jenkins, boyd & Ito, 2015), Online communities have shown to be especially relevant among teenagers and young people - whose life is widely mediated by technologies- since they might offer alteratives for them, providing different structures of status, reputation, and values that may respond to the need for freedom and differentiation from the family unit that emerges during the adolescence (Jenkins, boyd & Ito, 2015, p.16 ) (Kohlberg, 1969, p. 96), and to the search for their peers’ approval in their self-representation that emerges in parallel (de Vries, et al., 2016), Each SNS provides different affordances that contribute to creating specific communities. ‘Among them, TikTok is a relevant platform in community-building and plays an active role in the construction of today’s popular culture, contributing to the creation of a “cultural mindset” (boyd, 2014, p. 6), which implies that we use the platform as an identity pattern to shape our behavior, and to suit in the cultural dynamics of that platform. In parallel, Boffone (2022, p. 7) remarks: “By using apps as identity templates, youth can, in tum, create a stronger sense of self-identification’. This deeper sense of the self through self-representation seems to contrast with the aesthetics present in different social networks, characterized by their ephemerality and hyper-segmentation TikTok gathers a series of communities whose common factor is the adoption of an aesthetic in their self-presentation and online presence. In contrast to its traditional meaning, online aesthetics appear as a synonym for subculture or group, being linked to the lifestyle concept (Soto, 2022). The aesthetic is romantic and whimsical: impossibly beautiful friends having a spontaneous time (Burchell, 2023). The forest fairies represented in elfcore, the nineties football players praised by blokecore or the housewives lifestyle advocated in cottagecore, they all project strongly influential and idealized representations. While this visual category stems from other social networks such as Tumblr, TikTok catalyzed the traffic of this type of aspirational images on and off the platform (Soto, 2022, p. 199 ). Thus, aesthetics concentrate on TikTok, shared by user communities and extended to the large public through influencers’ posts and “find your style" videos. The aesthetics work as an identity mark used to code users’ online performance. Some of these styles have also been named cores. Their nature is similar to the likewise TikTok-based microtrends, fashion styles that experience an introductory phase through content creators with a rapid growth in popularity later extended to a large audience through the algorithms of the FYP (For You Page), and finally undergo a rapid decline, becomingdemodé and giving way to a new core (Mikhalylyants, 2023). In essence, their life cycle doesn't differ from any other trend, although its phases have a particular brevity, characteristic of the functioning of this platform. TikTok and gendered displays of the self The self-representation of the individual is carried out in accordance with gender standards. In this regard, the online self must be “modulated, moderated, and managed to deliver Find Your Style" videos are a type of video that share a common cover whose caption reads "Find your style" that document an aesthetic through multiple images under the premise of showing the user styles that they can identify with satisfying and relatable moments within particular gendered terms’ (Akane, 2019, p. 7) ‘Among the new forms of self-presentation inherent to digital platforms, the selfie has proven to be a significantly gender-biased self-representation. Butkowski et al. (2019) found that gender display is dominant in women's Instagram selfies, although generally presented in subtle ways. By contrast, those women who incorporate and exaggerate gender displays in their selfies tend to receive more feedback. When referring to gendered self-representation, it seems necessary to underline that the construction of an online visual identity in females is often crossed by the so-called male gaze, which promotes self-representation from a heterosexual male perspective. Women are more prone to pursue the canonical standard of female beauty by modifying their features after being exposed to a certain beauty standard shaped by the hegemonic male gaze (Dang, 2022, p. 1043). Both gendered reproductions of beauty standards and the male gaze are prevalent in the aesthetics, just as in the overall content of TikTok. The metrics and algorithms that operate within TikTok "FYP" feed, saturated with videos of apparent randomness, work in such a way as to censor and hide those subjects that do not conform to the ideals of young white femininity (Kennedy, 2023, 1070). In addition, the projection of a certain standard of beauty through TikTok not only states what content the user consumes but also has an impact on the way this content is consumed (Burcher, 2023) Elias and Gill (2018, p. 74) name “nano surveillance” a way of consuming content filtered by an aesthetic stereotype, which results in the female consumer's chronic scrutiny of her own body and the bodies of those women who appear in her FYP. Men's visual identity construction on social media is often inspired by media representations of men. In particular, young men mostly pose alone to highlight their appearance as “willing sexual or romantic objects" (Siibak, 2010, p. 403). More recent studies have provided further research on masculinity displayed on TikTok, and have suggested the concept of hybrid masculinity, as the “fusing of feminine and gay aesthetics with that which is traditionally masculine without sacrificing the power and privilege afforded to men’ (Foster & Baker, 2022, p. 1). This new TikTok-inherent masculinity both challenges and strengthens the physical and performative attributes traditionally assigned to the male hegemonic figure. Through this gender display framework, Goffman suggests that posing cues in mass met images of disengaged, subordinate women and tough, dominant men reproduce simplified and distorted views of interpersonal gender relations.” This view can be transferred to thepeer-generated content through social networking sites (SNS), in which the user distorts his self-image in pursuit of hegemonic canons of beauty and the perpetuation of unequal gender dynamics. 3.3, Platformization through online self-presentations The conscious and unconscious levels of self-representation suggested by Erving Goffman (1959) have been transposed to the online environment. Thus, parallel to the conscious techniques in the construction of an online self-identity, Van Dijck (2013) states that there exists an unconscious form of self-expression consistent of a process of data collection of the user's profile by the platforms that takes place without the user's express awareness. The process of data compilation is labeled as “datafication” (Mayer-Schénberger & Cukier, 2013), and addresses the now-imposed trend of turing every piece of information into data to create predictive analysis, signaling that data encompasses many things that weren't considered “valuable information” until nowadays (p. 19). In parallel, another shift appears, labeled as “dataveillance’, which consists in the monitoring of users based on their online data (Van Dijck, 2014, p. 205). These phenomena take place on the Intemet, and more specifically on platforms. Gillespie (2010) states that, just as a physical platform elevates someone from the rest, online platforms offer an opportunity to gain visibility, communicate, interact or sell, something which carries a certain populist aura. This remark becomes relevant in terms of self-presentation in view of the platforms’ traction among user-generated content. Van Dijck et al. (2018) argue that, despite presenting themselves as such, platforms “are not neutral nor are they value-free constructions”; and neither do they reflect the social. On the contrary, “they produce the social structures where we live", by constructing a specific set of norms and values inscribed in their architectures (p. 3). The dominance of platforms’ new digital environment requires therefore new platform-adapted dynamics. Thus, datafication and dataveillance are embedded in a larger process referred as “platformization” (Helmond, 2015, p. 2) which addresses the dominance of platform infrastructure and economic models on the web , affecting the production, distribution, and circulation of user-generated content . Teenagers and young adults, as platform users and prosumers, are deeply involved in the architecture of the platforms they belong to, as they are subjected to its norms. Young users intend to enter the platformized cultural market as they create content open to constant change according to datafied feedback of the user (Nieborg & Poel, 2018, pp. 4275 - 4276). According to Jenkins, Ito & boyd (2015), “the more hierarchical a culture is, the less participatory it becomes" (p. 22). Despite being fostered by platforms, participatory culture can be regarded as a rather utopiansocial structure that does not thoroughly correspond to the current digital environment, given that it finds social and technological barriers that keep platforms hierarchized . In the digital environment, filled with an overabundance of content, young users tend to adopt and replicate the platforms’ values and condition their content by datafied feedback to find a niche in the never-ending quest for the attention of their peers. This motivation behind online content generation, which responds to a new spirit of platform capitalism, is referred to {as participatory altention economy (Kessous, 2015), which responds to the revaluation that attention has undergone in our days, becoming a scarce and fluid commodity (Myllylahti 2020). The participatory attention economy is an update of the concept of the “attention economy" coined by Goldhaber (1997, n.p.), who already pointed out that this would be the ‘economy connatural to the Internet (2006, n.p.). Although its presence is generalized through every social media platform, the participatory attention economy does not operate in the same way on all of the platforms. As Liang (2022, p.1111) referred to the chinese version of TikTok, Douyin, the platform's algorithm-centered mechanisms leave little room to sociality, and instead prompts algorithmically-distributed content. In parallel, the values and features promoted within SNS make the attention economy unequal by definition. The search for a niche public is flawed by the platform and hegemonic values, which rewards white normative bodies through algorithmic visibility and virality. Self-presentation and quantification of the self On the Internet, the economy of attention can be easily quantifiable and datafied feedback is at the service of the user. This may lead users to adopt a strategic mindset that brings together a series of self-presentation practices and the shaping of a profile in order to gain new followers and boost their online status (Senft, 2013; Markwick, 2015). Van Dijek (2013) noted: “gradually, users have come to understand the art of online self-presentation and the importance of social networking sites as tools for self-promotion” (p. 204). In parallel, Pooley (2010) suggests there exists a feedback between two apparently contradictory factors, as the aim for expressive differentiation and self-promotion understood in the context of a market economy. This synthesis gives rise to what Pooley (2010) calls “calculated authenticity’, an actualization of the self-performance that takes place through social media platforms, and happens through the staging of a certain role before an audience aware of this performance. The phenomenon of the commodification of the self was already theorized decades before the arrival of social media. During the nineties, framing this shift as a part of a reconstruction of the social life on a market basis Fairclough (1993) determined that marketizing the self might provoke pathological effects and have major ethical consequences, among them, how this process may blur the boundaries between the authentic self and the promotional self (p. 142). Another important effect, exposed by Giddens (1991) is how self-promotion may implysubjugating the significance of the self to a strategic purpose and how problematic is to center the narrative of the self in a series of standardized influences related to consumption On the internet, sel-commodification explores a process of constant self-actualization (Cijsouw, 2022). In this regard, TikTok serves as a site for constant identity work in the service of consumer culture, a platform in which users perform a permanent actualization and explore the “pluralities they face in the construction of their own digital identities” (p. 3) The commoditized dimension of online presentations runs alongside the “quantification of the self", a term first suggested by Gary Wolf (2007) that encompasses the several ways in which individuals, as users of online platforms, transform all our personal data into figures, from applications that count steps or heart rates to the quantification of subjective matters performed by social media (Burchell, 2023). Success, beauty or ingenuity are submitted to a numeric quantification, being traduced into metrics at the service of the late-capitalist economy of attention and therefore conditioning the self-presentation techniques of their users, performed from a commodified and strategic perspective, Algorithms and calculated publics in self-presentation via TikTok Platformization, and specifically, the processes of datafication and dataveillance, result in the emergence of more and more precise algorithms. Gillespie (2014, p. 22) underlines a determinate dimension of algorithms: their capacity to produce calculated publics, which is a key element in this research as they participate in structuring the publics that operate within a digital environment. In the case of TikTok, algorithms create calculated publics by suggesting to them to develop an affinity with certain fashion styles, music genres or influencers, among others. TikTok has been described as the social media with the most accurate algorithm (Klung et al, 2021), and countless users have attested with astonishment the platform's ability to ‘suggest content based on specific interests at any moment, almost as if it were able to read ‘our minds. This happens due to an algorithmic mechanism whose choice of content is based ‘on the user's interests repeated overtime and his or her recent interactions (Boffone, 2022). Consequently, the more time the user spends consuming content on the platform, the more accurate and personalized the future content will be. Regarding their power to curate the content users consume, Gillespie (2014) pointed out that we should not consider them as mere codes that produce outputs, but as a “socially constructed and institutionally managed mechanism” which is designed to assure a new knowledge logic for the public (p. 26). Since algorithms are integrated into platformization, the new knowledge logic they promote is conditioned by the platform values. In parallel, these logics are adopted by users in their content creation practices, generating analgorithmic culture. 4. State of the art ‘The representation of the individual through social networks has been a widely researched issue since the beginning of the Intemet era. Not so the new phenomena impelled by the social network TikTok, whose popularization coincided with the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic (Boffone, 2022). Thus, the recent nature of TikTok culture, specifically, the aesthetics phenomenon, as well as its influence on the construction of an online identity, precludes vast scholarly coverage for the time being. As said, there is no detailed breakdown of the influence of the aesthetics, but rather certain, hints. Despite the shortage, there exist theoretical approaches to aesthetics useful to frame them as a phenomenon. Soto (2022) explores the parallelism between the current and the historical of certain nostalgic aesthetics present in TikTok. Probably the most extensive study that has addressed aesthetics is the one developed by Navarro Méndez et al. (2022) within the scope of Instagram, which points out its relevance as a social catalyst in the creation of new identities and online communities. Burchell’s work on TikTok’s aesthetics and their relationship with algorithms (2023) has provided useful background information to this internet phenomenon. Cijsouw's thesis (2023) on self-commodification through the TikTok that git!” aesthetic relates the processes of constant self-actualization based on consumer culture with the adherence of certain aesthetics on social networks. In relation to the representation of oneself through TikTok, the Spanish research carried out by Hernndez-Serrano et al. (2022) analyzes the self-presentation of Spanish adolescents fon TikTok and Instagram through a questionnaire and an Exploratory Factor Analysis. ‘Among the most striking findings are the fact that practices in both social networks did not differ too much between them, and how self-representation could be less driven by social feedback, the need for self-consistency, and truthfulness, A key study in the current research on TikTok behaviors is TikTok Cultures (2022), the book edited by Trevor Boffone that revises the different cultural dimensions that converge on the platform. Among the main current contributors to this very field of study, Crystal Abidin is the author of abundant work on TikTok practices and founder of TikTok Cultures Research Network, Abidin (2020) conceptualizes attention economies and self-commodification in the frame of TikTok. In terms of gendered self-presentation via TikTok, it's worth mentioning the visual content analysis-based research on gender display on TikTok developed by Foster & Baker (2022) shows evidence that new masculinities are arising in the platform. Other studies over the past years have also provided valuable insight on self-presentation practices on the Internet as a whole. Contemporary research developed by Choi and Williams (2020) on self-representation through social media signals the differences in self-representation according to the format and platform of the content published.5. Methodology ‘As explained above (see Research Design), the research will consist of a multi-method qualitative approach that gathers four different data collection methods (an exploratory ‘questionnaire, video scrapping, participatory workshops and semi-structured interviews) and three data analysis methods (content analysis, video semiotic analysis and thematic analysis) The field site spans the city of Rubi (Barcelona province) and the Sarria-Sant Gervasi district of the city of Barcelona. They were selected as field sites in search of possible differences in the perception of aesthetics according to socio-economic variables, and in search of a variety of perspectives between the urban and the periphery. According to the gross household disposable income per inhabitant by municipality (Diputacié de Barcelona, 2017), Rubi was selected for being one of the main cities in the periphery of Barcelona and the most inhabited district with low rates of income. Sarria-Sant Gervasi was selected for being ‘an urban district of Barcelona, and being the one with highest rates of family income (Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2022). 5.1, Data collection 5.1.1. Exploratory questionnaire The first part of the methodology will consist of a questionnaire that will serve as a first approach to aesthetics to identify the aesthetics with which young people are most familiar and other aspects that can provide us with a more defined context about self-representation through TikTok. In addition to serving as a first sampling, the results obtained in those ‘questions focused on the knowledge of aesthetics will determine those aesthetics analyzed in content analysis and visual semiotic analysis. The convenience for data collection and analysis provided by an online questionnaire (Evans & Mathur, 2005) and its capacity to collect a wide range of data from a large number of respondents (Leavy, 2017) have been relevant factors to include this method. The ‘questionnaire will comprise the following typologies of questions: a) dichotomous questions, b) multiple choice questions, c) ranking questions, and d) open-ended questions, which can provide unforeseen information. It will be disseminated through opt-in emails with embedded multimedia surveys and QRs giving access to the questionnaire, placed in public and academic spaces, The online questionnaire is programmed to be answered by people between 16 and 22 years old. The targeted participants will be inhabitants of Rubi and Sarria-Sant Gervasi (Barcelona), as stated above. The questions will address the respondent's relationship with TikTok content creation and consumption, their knowledge level and identification with certain aesthetics, and questions regarding their socio-economic status. Lastly, theparticipant will be proposed to join in the workshop and interviews that will take place in the research. If interested in participating, the respondents will need to provide a contact email address and in the case of minors, they will be asked to leave an email address of their parent or legal guardian 5.1.2. Video scrapping ‘As a second stage of the data collection, a video scraping on the scope of TikTok will be conducted to provide a wide range of data, As stated by Mitchell (2018,), the automatic gathering of information enables the collecting and processing of vast quantities of data from the intemet through more optimized tools than our browsers. The data collection will focus on 250 TikTok videos containing the hashtag corresponding to five different aesthetics, i.e., 50 videos of each hashtag. As previously stated (see section 5.1.1.), these five aesthetics correspond to the results obtained in the questionnaire. The data collection of filtered TikTok will be performed using web scraping tools such as Beautiful Soup or similar will be later used for content analysis. Out of the 250 TikTok videos extracted for the content analysis, a posterior sample of 25 videos will be filtered under a criteria based on their metrics and on their typology, to prioritize the thematic variety of each aesthetic that will serve as a sample to a posterior visual semiotic analysis. 5.1.3. Participatory workshops This project will feature creative participatory workshops to develop coherent short-term ‘ethnographies that help provide deeper information than those obtained using observational methods (Pink & Ardévol, 2018). This innovative method combines traditional ethnographic methods by observing participants, and participatory methods by asking them to contribute to group tasks. In this sense, workshops are widely used in participatory action research approaches involving youth and placing them on an equal footing in the research process (@rydon-Miller & Maguire, 2009). In the case of this study, workshops can be useful not only for its positive results among young participants but also because of the recent nature of the topic addressed. As teenagers and young adults are immersed in participatory internet culture, it seems convenient to deal with the topic from a participatory point of view (Pink & Ardévol, 2018) (Castellvi, 2017) The participatory workshops will be made up of eight workshops in a two hours session, consisting of an introductory part, in which the content and dynamics will be explained, discussing the aesthetics topic and dividing participants into subgroups, and a development part, that will comprise the production of presentational videos by each subgroup. The sessions will be eminently participative. That is, beyond a series of guidelines for the session, participants will be encouraged to actively engage at a conversational and creative level. The selection of participants will be conducted from the questionnaire, through a search for participants ad hoc and by using the snowballing sample method The groups will include around eight participants between 16 and 22 years old and the composition of each group will be based on the place of residence (Rubi or Sarria-SantGervasi). There will be as well a differentiation between gender, dividing between male and female, and age, between underage and adult participants (see Table 1 below). Table 4 Focus group overview Group A: 8 women between 16 and 18 Group E: 8 women between 18 and 22 years old from Rubi years old from Rubi Group B: 8 men between 16 and 18 years Group F: 8 men between 18 and 22 years old from Rubi old from Rubi Group C: 8 women between 16 and 18 Group G: 8 women between 18 and 22 years old from from Sarria-Sant Gervasi years old from Sarria-Sant Gervasi Group D: 8 men between 16 and 18 years Group H: 8 men between 18 and 22 years old from Sarria-Sant Gervasi old from Sarria-Sant Gervasi 5.1.4, Semi-structured interviews Subsequent to the execution of the creative participatory workshops, a series of semi-structured interviews will take place to gather relevant information under the surface of the workshops. Out of the participants in the workshops, around 30 participants (between 2 to 5 participants from each workshop) of diverse ages and socio-economic profiles will be chosen depending on their participation and availability. The interviews will consist of a loosely scripted conversation with the participant to approach their experience of reception and online representation, by asking questions about their particular relationship with their public image on TikTok. Semi-structured interviews can be valuable for this research due to the possibility it offers to contrast the collective consensus resulting from the workshops, assessing those topics and aspects that may have been left out of the information extracted 5.2. Data analysis 5.2.1. Semi-automatic content analysis‘As a second stage of analysis, content analysis (Gheyle & Jacobs, 2017) will be developed ‘on the scope of TikTok to obtain further information from the videos corresponding to the aesthetics The content analysis aims to examine a wide range of data and thus study possible patterns or relationships between different videos and aesthetics. The process will ‘encompass the sampling (pre-coding), the coding itself, and evaluative tests of the analysis (ibid). The content analysis be semi-automated, meaning that it will use a semi-automated system that exploits natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning (ML) techniques for initial automatic coding, which is later revised and corrected by human coders (Yan et al., 2014), by means of computer-assisted qualitative data analysis such as Atlas.Ti, NVivo or analogous. The content analysis aims to respond to the following research questions: R.Q.1: What are ephemeral aesthetics? and R.Q.1.2: how can they be classified? 5.2.2. ual semiotics analysis As a third step in the research, a visual semiotics analysis will aim to delve into the TikTok videos previously analyzed to examine the meaning of the several layers of content in those videos, The sample consists of 25 videos, five videos of each aesthetic, The visual semiotics analysis will be used to analyze the videos created by participants within the participatory workshops. The semiotic analysis will take into account the representational complexity of the extracted data (Mikhaeil & Baskerville, 2019), since social media data is multimedia data, embedding multiple meanings. The study will therefore focus on its representational, compositional and interactive meaning. In terms of representation, that means, the participants in the video, both narrative and conceptual structures will be analyzed. Regarding the composition, diverse aspects will be taken into account: its information value, the framing of the elements, its salience and modality. Lastly, the semiotic analysis will study its interactive meaning (i., the relationship between content and viewer), evaluating the contact, distance and the point of view of the portrayed participants (Van Leeuwen & Jewitt, 2004). The analysis aims to answer the following research questions: R.Q.2.1.: What kind of gender stereotypes do they convey? and R.Q.2.2: What kind of values do ephemeral aesthetics promote? 5.2.3. Thematic analysis This research will feature as well a thematic analysis that aims to show evidence on how young users receive internet content and reproduce it through their personal accounts. The thematic analysis was selected for it enables to systematically develop pattems of meaning within a dataset. It will be performed in an inductive way, meaning that the coding and the development of the theme are guided by the content of the data (Braun & Clarke, 2012) andfrom an experiential approach, since the research aims to prioritize participants’ voices and their own construction of meaning, The experiential approach to thematic analysis leaves a place to focus on the meanings conveyed by participants and offer a broader perspective of individual experience and meaning (Anderson & Clarke, 2019). Thematic analysis will start from a first familiarization by revising transcripts data from workshops and semi-structured interviews and listening to the recordings. A second phase involves the systematic analysis of data by generating initial codes out of the data, which will be performed with qualitative data analysis softwares such as NVivo, Atlas.Ti or analogous. The coding will be followed by a phase consisting of the search for themes across codes (Braun & Clarke, 2012). Thematic classification should be regarded as a way to capture “something important about the data in relation to the research question, and represents some level of patterned response or meaning within the data set” (Braun & Clarke, 2006, p. 82). Taking this into account, a fourth stage of the analysis will focus on the review of the themes constructed in relation to the data and potential themes that may have not been raised yet during the search, formulating several questions that address themes’ coherence, variety and usefulness, among others. Lastly, the final labeling and definition of the themes and the elaboration of a report on results found will conclude the process. The thematic analysis intends to respond to the following research questions: R.Q.3.1.: How does the promotion of ephemeral aesthetics influence the self-representation of young women who consume or create such content?, R.Q.3.2: How does the promotion of ephemeral aesthetics influence the self-representation of young men who consume or create such content?, R.Q.4.1.: What strategies do young people use to gain visibility and differentiate themselves? and RQ4.2.: How do algorithms shape self-representation of teenagers and young adults? Alll the contents that comprise the research plan explained above are summarized in the following table: Table 2 Research plan overview Specific objectives Research questions Data collection Data analysis (01. Identify and define the = Semi automatic most common types of | R.Q.1.1. What are ephemeral ephemeral aesthetics. = Online content analysis aesthetics? questionnaire = Visual semiotic analysis = Video serapping R.Q.1.2 How can they be classified?0.2. Analyze the values and gender stereotypes promoted by these R.Q.2.1. What kind of gender contents. stereotypes do they convey? R.Q2.2. What kind of values do ‘ephemeral aesthetics promote? ©. 3. To study how 16 to = Thematic analysis 22 year olds recevve the | R.Q.3.1, How does the promotion of promoted values and Participatory identities and analyze | ephemeral aesthetics influence the possible ‘gender workshops differences in reception selt-representation of young women who consume or create such = Semi-structured ‘content? interviews R.Q.3.4. How does the promotion of ‘ephemeral aesthetics influence the seltrepresentation of young men who consume or create such content? 0.4 To analyze how | R41. What strategies do young pplatformization logics are | people use to gain visibility and enacted in the production | differentiate themselves? of ephemeral aesthetic content on TikTok by young people between 16 and 22 years old R.Q.4.2, How do algorithms shape sel-representation of teenagers, ‘and young adults? 5.3. Research ethics For what concems the ethics of this research, and given that a part of the participants will be underage, data will be treated with extreme consciousness. In general terms, the processing and storing of data will be developed in search of the maximum anonymization and will be disseminated through secure servers (franzke et al., 2020). Before proceeding with the first steps of the research, TikTok legal terms and conditions will be taken into account. (Townsend & Wallace, 2016). Data collection in questionnaires will be fully anonymized, meaning no names or identifiers will be published to avoid any damage orintromission. In the same vein, data collected through video scraping will be public data ‘extracted from an open platform (TikTok) (Townsend & Wallace, 2016). The images analyzed will be anonymized by deleting the content creators name and username and pixeling their faces, to avoid any possible harm to the person's dignity and public image. Before the beginning of the workshops and the semi-structured interviews, participants will be provided with an informed consent document outlining the terms of the research project and detailing how the participant's data will be processed. In the case of underage participants, their parents or legal guardians and participants will need to sign informed consent before they participate in workshops and interviews. A code will be assigned to each workshop and to each participant (it can also be an alias). Any details that could lead to identification will also be edited. Lastly, the storing of content will be limited to secure academic websites and the dissemination of the research will be executed through safe and reliable platforms. Plus, an ethical review of the research will be requested to the Pompeu Fabra University Research Ethics Board. 6. Timeline The following is a possible timetable for carrying out the project within the scope of a PhD thesis over a three years period JA] FB] MR | AP MY JU JU NV | Dc. AG ST oc ‘st year Literature review Theoretical framework building Research design and methods expansion Ethical protocols preparation Online questionnaire administration Analysis corpus building Semi automatized content analysisSecond year Literature reviews Visual semiotic analysis Participatory workshop preparation Semi structured interviews preparation Workshop participants search Participatory workshops Semi-structured interviews Participatory workshop transcription and data processing 0 Semi-structured interviews transcription and data processing Third year Literature review Workshop and interview analysis Report and thesis writing Submission and defenseReferences Abidin, C. (2020). Mapping Intemet Celebrity on TikTok: Exploring Attention Economies and Visibility Labours. Cultural Science Journal, 12(1), pp. 77-103. DOL https://doi.ora/10.5334/esci.140 Ajuntament de Barcelona (2017). Distribucié territorial de la renda familiar a Barcelona, 2017. Oficina Municipal de Dades. 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