#JewishTikTok: The JewToks' Fight against Antisemitism
In: TikTok Cultures in the United States
Routledge
2022
9781032249162
TikTok Cultures in the United States examines the role of TikTok in US popular culture, paying close attention to the app’s growing body of subcultures.
Featuring an array of scholars from varied disciplines and backgrounds, this book uses TikTok (sub)cultures as a point of departure from which to explore TikTok’s role in US popular culture today. Engaging with the extensive and growing scholarship on TikTok from international scholars, chapters in this book create frameworks and blueprints from which to analyze TikTok within a distinctly US context, examining topics such as gender and sexuality, feminism, race and ethnicity and wellness.
On Ebbrecht-Hartmann's contribution: This chapter explores JewTok’s unique ways of translating Jewish traditions and customs into TikTok’s vernaculars using memes, dance, challenges, and multiple communicative features. Those performative strategies facilitate dialogic modes that enable users to encounter and learn about the JewTok’s community’s burning day-to-day issues. However, TikTok’s playful environment that allows the celebration of Judaism comes with a price as the JewToks face two significant threats: (1) Human—TikTok’s dark side in which hate trolls are attacking JewToks accounts and spreading hate content. “Haters are hijacking Jewish content and giving it an antisemitic remix,” said one of the JewToks interviewed for this chapter; (2) Algorithm—TikTok’s moderation system constantly blocks JewToks’ responses to discriminating and humiliating content. The fight against antisemitism on TikTok might be a double-edged sword, but the JewToks believe their harness of the platform’s creative, engaging, and highly visible tools can change the toxic environment of hate speech, racism, and antisemitism in the digital realm.
