Feminism, gender identity and polarization in TikTok and Twitter

TL;DR

This study analyzes polarization around feminism and transsexuality on TikTok and Twitter, revealing highly modularized communities with differing engagement styles, and highlights the predominance of transinclusive feminism among youth.

Contribution

It provides a comparative social network analysis of feminist and transsexuality debates on TikTok and Twitter, emphasizing community structure and generational perspectives.

Findings

Debates are highly modularized with isolated communities.

Transinclusive feminism is dominant among young users.

TikTok fosters less partisan, more dialogue-based interactions.

Abstract

The potential of social media to create open, collaborative and participatory spaces allows young women to engage and empower themselves in political and social activism. In this context, the objective of this research is to analyze the polarization in the debate at the intersection between the defense of feminism and transsexuality, preferably among the young population, symbolized in the use of the term 'TERF'. To do this, the existing communities on this subject on Twitter and TikTok have been analyzed with Social Network Analysis techniques, in addition to the presence of young people in them. The results indicate that the debates between both networks are not very cohesive, with a highly modularized structure that suggests isolation of each community. For this reason, it may be considered that the debate on sexual identity has resulted in a strong polarization of feminist activism in social media. Likewise, the positions of transinclusive feminism are very much in the majority among young people; this reinforces the idea of an ideological debate that can also be understood from a generational perspective. Finally, differential use between both social networks has been identified, where TikTok is a less partisan and more dialogue-based network than Twitter, which leads to discussions and participation in a more neutral tone.