Unveiling Voices: A Co-Hashtag Analysis of TikTok Discourse on the 2023 Israel-Palestine Crisis

Abstract

TikTok has gradually become one of the most pervasive social media platforms in our daily lives. While much can be said about the merits of platforms such as TikTok, there is a different kind of attention paid towards the political affect of social media today compared to its impact on other aspects of modern networked reality. I explored how users on TikTok discussed the crisis in Palestine that worsened in 2023. Using network analysis, I situate keywords representing the conflict and categorize them thematically based on a coding schema derived from politically and ideologically differentiable stances. I conclude that activism and propaganda are contending amongst themselves in the thriving space afforded by TikTok today.