Hello! 🙂 Thank you so much for your assistance with my
assignment! I am tasked with creating a review that guides readers through the
critical concepts underpinning my exploration of playful platforms. Each
concept will be rigorously explored through existing literature and integrated
to establish the scholarly framework vital to my focus on Memetic Participation
on TikTok for Activism, Memory, and Conflict. For this overview, we will not
delve into Activism, Memory, and Conflict; instead, we’ll lay the groundwork
for understanding playful platforms, particularly within the digital media
context. To achieve a thorough comprehension, I propose using a structured
funnel approach, which will systematically narrow down from broad theoretical
underpinnings to specific applications on social media platforms.
I was thinking of something like this:
This overview could begin with an introductory paragraph
such as: “To date, research has not formally defined the concept of a
playful platform. However, various scholars scrutinized the idea of play being
enacted, performed, and expressed through platforms. Nonetheless, to better
understand the emergence of platforms as playful, we must first unpack the idea
of play and its sociological and technological manifestations in our digital
lives.”
First Layer:
Play –
Our exploration can begin with Johan Huizinga’s seminal work
“Homo Ludens,” where he describes play as a fundamental, culturally
significant process distinct from ordinary life yet crucial for cultural
development. This could provide a solid foundation for understanding play’s
impact both in traditional contexts and as it extends into digital realms.
Also, Sutton-Smith, in “The Ambiguity of Play,” highlights various
play theories and their applicative nuances in social practices. Expanding on
this, we can use Roger Caillois in “Man, Play, and Games,” providing
a taxonomy of play types—agon (competition), alea (chance), mimicry
(simulation), and ilinx (vertigo)—that help us analyze how these forms are
represented on digital platforms. Additionally, we can use Katie Salen and Eric
Zimmerman’s Rules of Play to articulate essential game design principles that
are instrumental in creating interactive and engaging digital experiences.
Ideally, the final scholar mentioned in our discussion should act as a bridge
to the subsequent layer. This ensures a seamless transition and maintains a
coherent narrative thread as we explore the evolution of play from traditional
arenas to digital platforms.
Second Layer:
Digital Playfulness –
We begin by exploring various venues for Digital
Playfulness, starting with online gaming. Platforms like Steam and PlayStation
Network exemplify play through their interactive gaming environments, community
engagement, and intricate virtual economies. We then extend our discussion to
Augmented and Virtual Reality, where technologies such as AR and VR (e.g.,
Pokémon GO and Oculus Rift) merge digital visuals with the physical world to
craft immersive experiences. Transitioning from these platforms, we can focus
on Social Media Platforms as another arena for Digital Playfulness. Platforms
like Twitch, Snapchat, and Instagram incorporate playful elements such as
communal gaming, filters, stories, and interactive media, creating engaging and
light-hearted user experiences. This sets the stage to delve deeper into social
media platforms in the third layer, where the nuances of digital playfulness
require further exploration and unpacking with an understing of Platform
Affordances. More sources can be used here are “Glas R., Lammes S., Lange
M., Raessens J., and Vries I. (2019). The playful citizen. Amsterdam University
Press.”
Third Layer:
Platform Affordances and vernaculars –
In this layer, we
delve into how platforms specifically structure and promote playful
interactions through their features. To understand this, we can reference
“The Affordances of Social Media Platforms” by Taina Bucher and Anne
Helmond, which explores how these features facilitate user engagement.
Additionally, Nicholas A. John’s work at Hebrew University, particularly his
analysis of affordances on platforms like Facebook, provides critical insights
into how different functionalities influence user behavior. As we move on in
this overview to focus on TikTok, we explore its enhancement of playfulness not
only through the affordances of platforms but also through vernaculars. Seminal
research, such as the study by Gibbs et al. (2015), “#Funeral and Instagram:
Death, Social Media, and Platform Vernacular,” highlights the unique
dialects of content creation that are essential for our conceptualizing playful
platforms. On TikTok, interactive features like “Duets” and
“Reactions” serve as tools that exemplify platform vernaculars as
they not only facilitate but shape and design users’ ways to engage creatively,
moving beyond mere passive consumption and enriching the platform’s playful
nature. TikTok’s algorithmic curation further enhances this by tailoring user
experiences to promote content that is engaging and entertaining, effectively
supporting a playful interaction paradigm. This setup positions TikTok as a
“virtual playground,” a concept supported by studies like
“Playground as Meaning-Making Space: Multimodal Making and Re-making of
Meaning in the (Virtual) Playground” and “Intensified Play: Cinematic
Study of TikTok Mobile App.” This assertion aligns well with Lev
Manovich’s perspective in “The Language of New Media,” where he articulates
that the digital age has “infinitely expanded the ‘playground,'”
offering boundless opportunities for interaction within these virtual
environments.
Fourth Layer:
Social Media Challenges –
In this layer, we explore a key playful affordance and
vernaculars of platforms – Social Media Challenges. Social media challenges on
platforms are designed as communal, participatory, and often viral calls to
action, inviting users to engage with specific content themes or actions. These
challenges have not only facilitated widespread participation but have also
become vehicles for addressing social-political issues through playful means.
It is crucial to emphasize that challenges on these platforms serve as playful
yet potent means to communicate serious and complex topics. This concept lies
at the core of our arguments about playful platforms. A review of literature on
notable social media challenges, such as the Ice Bucket Challenge in 2014, will
illustrate how these playful activities can serve as serious conduits for
social-political advocacy. Transitioning into the fifth layer, we can start
noting that on platforms like TikTok, challenges are increasingly viewed as
memetic audiovisual texts, being popular methods for articulating
social-political narratives, ensuring substantial algorithmic and human
exposure, and enhancing the communicative impact of user-generated content.
This sets the stage to further unpack how TikTok utilizes these challenges to
amplify voices within various social-political contexts.
Fifth Layer:
TikTok and Memetic Participation –
On TikTok, challenges frequently transform into memetic
phenomena, where audiovisual texts merge music with performance in forms that
are both replicable and adaptable. This transformation leverages the memetic
nature not just for entertainment but also for the swift dissemination of
cultural norms and values among users. This concept of Memetic Participation on
platforms draws heavily from scholars like Henry Jenkins, who elucidates how
media convergence and participatory culture morph individual acts of play into
collective experiences. Additionally, insights from Jean Burgess and Joshua
Green, authors of “YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture,”
are invaluable for understanding the nuances of content creation and audience
engagement, which are directly applicable to TikTok and similar platforms. Most
importantly, the work of Limor Shifman in “Memes in Digital Culture”
explores how memes act as carriers of cultural transmission, a discussion that
is crucial for analyzing TikTok’s role in digital play and cultural exchange.
Note 1:
Now, with a few final sentences, it’s essential to
synthesize the insights gathered from our discussion into a precise definition
of a “playful platform.” (or at least try to!) This definition should
encapsulate the nuances and characteristics identified through our exploration
of digital playfulness, platform affordances and vernaculars, and memetic
participation on TikTok. Crafting a clear and comprehensive definition based on
our overview can ensure that I can more properly present my three dissertation papers,
each at a different stage of development, through three lenses that explore
TikTok as a playful platform: Activism, Memory, and Conflict
Note 2:
While the structure outlined provides a solid framework for
your paper, the specific content within each section should be flexible. You
should adapt and refine arguments based on the sources you find most compelling
and relevant. Importantly, if any part of the narrative-making process is
unclear or if you need to discuss how to integrate certain sources effectively,
I’m more than willing to help clarify via a Zoom call or chat. It’s crucial
that the storyline is clear to you to ensure the paper is well-composed over
the five pages. If you need more space to fully articulate your ideas, just let
me know, and I can adjust the page limit accordingly. This flexibility will
help ensure that our exploration of playful platforms on TikTok is thorough and
insightful.
Tnx much!!