TikTok Teaches Too A qualitative study on the role of playful communication in skill-sharing videos on Tiktok

During the previous year, while the entire world was on lockdown, many individuals took it upon themselves to share their passions and skills online, learning from other skilled individuals and sharing what they are experts in. This phenomenon is known as skill-sharing, where individuals who are particularly good at something produce instructional and informational videos online to share in their skills. The platform most of these videos were being posted to was TikTok, a relatively new social media platform that has been gaining immense popularity over the globe, even competing with instagram. TikTok is well-known for having light-hearted and fun content that can be considered as playful. Defining and measuring “playfulness” is not as simple as it may seem, while it does seem like an easy and straightforward concept to grasp, it entails many characteristics that form the attitude. Playfulness can be integrated every aspect of life, so for this research it was interesting to study the role playful communication has on the skill-sharing videos posted on the social media platform, TikTok, with the research question of What is the role of playful communication in skill-sharing videos on Tiktok? In order to answer the research question, this study was approached by a qualitative perspective, 100 TikToks were analyzed to gain insight on the role playful communication holds in skill-sharing TikToks. It was found that overall, TikTok is a playful platform, and any process taken through the application will contain playful elements due to the nature of the platform. Additionally, the results showed that during the display of skills many elements of playfulness can be pointed out such as humor. Furthermore, playful communication played a major role in the teaching process of skill sharing. Finally, playful communication was an essential factor in fostering engagement between the TikTok creators and their skill-sharing students.