On March 30 and 31, 2023, the first academic conference nationwide on the social media platform TikTok will take place at TU Dresden’s Chair of Applied Linguistics. Participants will use the two conference days to talk about TikTok from different viewpoints. The main focus will be on how users communicate on the platform: How do they talk about current events? How are discourses shaped? What means are used for this? How do users combine text, images, sound and language to make their position clear and how do they frame themselves?

“While extensive research has already been conducted on TikTok in the English-speaking world, only very sparse German approaches exist. Yet there have long been researchers in Germany, Austria and Switzerland who have studied TikTok or use the app themselves – or both. I wanted to bring them together, and so I had the idea of organizing a conference,” explains Prof. Simon Meier-Vieracker, Chair of Applied Linguistics.

TikTok has become one of the most-used social networks in the world. With this growth in popularity comes increased significance in society. Since teenagers and young adults in particular are active on TikTok, the app also plays a role in educational settings, both within and outside of schools. The platform’s basic functions, in particular the option to use existing sounds when producing new videos, influence the way in which users stage themselves in their videos. Intertextuality, intermediality and imitation are key. With a view to newer research on digital (image) practices, this mode of representation can be described as “memefication.” The conference therefore poses the question of how TikTok’s multimodal media setting at the intersection of memefication and performance is used in a form characteristic of publicly networked communication and what options for relaying information arise from this.

Simon Meier-Vieracker, co-organizer of the event, is one of the few professors in Germany who are active on TikTok. His account @fussballinguist is very popular, boasting nearly 75,000 followers. What began as a simple way to pass the time has turned into a sort of experiment for the TUD professor of applied linguistics. It has also provided an opportunity for him to disseminate linguistics-related content to the masses and market the subject of linguistics and the city of Dresden. “I’m a media linguist and am particularly interested in social media. Therefore, I feel a certain professional obligation to check out all platforms. Of course, this includes TikTok. I was chatting with a colleague about self-reference on Twitter and he encouraged me to look at TikTok, citing the same behaviors, just in visual form instead of written. And then the algorithm got me in its clutches right away,” Meier-Vieracker says of his beginnings on TikTok. Since then, Prof. Meier-Vieracker has been nominated for the Goldene Blogger influencer award in the “TikTok” category.

The conference is organized by Prof. Simon Meier-Vieracker (TU Dresden), Friederike Fischer (TU Dresden) and Lisa Niendorf (HU Berlin). Funding is provided by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. All lectures, presentations and discussions will also be streamed live on YouTube (registration required).

Further information is available at https://tu-dresden.de/gsw/slk/germanistik/al/forschung/tiktoktagung-2023

Contact

Prof. Simon Meier-Vieracker

+49 351 463-36403