Umeå University's logo

The study aims to analyze how humor is used to spread disinformation in TikTok videos. Thesocial media app, TikTok, has become a significant source of information among young adults, while at the same time, disinformation has become a growing problem on social media. Due to TikTok's playful complexity, it becomes challenging for the platform to balance humorous expressions in content moderation. Due to the growing problem of disinformation and TikTok's difficulties in moderating humor, this thesis aims to shed light on the role of humor in disinformation videos on TikTok through three case studies. The cases studied are “The pope and Trump”, “Birds Aren’t Real” and “Europeans don’t drink water”, for each case, we have analyzed four videos along with their associated comments. The method used in this study is digital ethnography with observations forming the primary data. We analyzed our study through a thematic analysis with three different themes, these are (1) Satire and humor as tools for disinformation, (2) Media users' reactions and engagement and (3) Distribution and TikTok's features. The theoretical framework is based on Stuarts Halls theory encoding/decoding (1980) and José van Dijck and Thomas Poells theory social media Logic (2013). The analysis reveals how humor is a central tool in the distribution of disinformation on TikTok, as observed in the cases “The Pope and Trump, “Birds Aren’t Real” and “Europeans don’t drink water”. Humor, audio memes and exaggerated content are key elements to strengthen the message and contribute to the virality of these videos. TikToks technical features, such as stitching and duetting, allow users to interact with and spread disinformation, playing a significant role in the platform’s information flow. Additionally, the use of hashtags enables users to distribute content to a wider audience. We have also observed that users play a vital role in the distribution of disinformation. How a video is encoded and decoded is essential for understating how disinformation takes part in the information flow on TikTok. In conclusion, humor plays a significant role in how disinformation spreads, at the same time users play a crucial role in determining the contents truthfulness and further virality.