Following TikTok: Emerging user practices in Turkey

This dissertation explores contemporary TikTok user experiences in Turkey by putting the cultural, social, and political context of the country that shapes TikTok user practices in dialogue with the global controversies the platform has sparked. Since its launch, TikTok has sparked local and global controversies while simultaneously continuing to expand its popularity worldwide. Marking an uptick in its user-base across the globe, especially when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, TikTok has also faced controversy and criticism internationally for enacting unauthorized digital surveillance and providing users with addictive algorithms. While concerns about digital surveillance echoed in Turkey, TikTok spurred an earlier controversy around its allegedly 'low-quality' and 'problematic' content deemed culturally insignificant when it first became available in the country. Tracking the social contempt that TikTok initially generated in Turkey and its broad appeal during the COVID 19 pandemic, this dissertation contends with top-down debates surrounding TikTok, which obscure the distinctive ways TikTok users engage with the platform. The dissertation builds on theoretical frameworks focused on critical algorithm studies, digital surveillance, and digital distraction. It adopts an in-depth qualitative and local approach to explore emerging user experiences in relation to Turkey's authoritarian digital surveillance regime, the social polarization of the country, and the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. These contexts have given rise to emerging user practices on the platform, ranging from establishing connections with algorithms for fostering intimacy to scrolling for cultivating self-care in hopes of coping with pandemic-induced stress and saving posts in drafts to escape digital surveillance. The dissertation examines emerging TikTok practices and their cultural significance in Turkey by exploring the inner workings of algorithms, digital intimacies, digital surveillance, and the compulsion to scroll from the point of view of users at a local level.