If you enjoy The Addition, it would mean a lot if you could share it and encourage others to sign up. Let’s make this community even bigger and better - thank you!
For me, like many others, TikTok is a bit of an escape. I use it to scroll through funny and entertaining videos. I don’t go to the app looking for news, like I do on Twitter. Quite the opposite, in fact. Furthermore, when I post videos there they also tend to be less news focussed than what I post elsewhere (although not always).
For a while now, the short form video app has been more than just a place for trend dances. It is increasingly becoming a news source. A report from Enders Analysis last month laid this all out:
Ofcom named the platform the fastest growing source of news in the UK between 2020 and 2022 (though it is still not close to Facebook). A 2022 Pew Research Center survey showed a quarter of US adults under 30 "regularly" got news from TikTok. TikTok is also growing its reach among older demographics—a dynamic that has hastened publisher adoption.
While it might seem obvious that posting to TikTok is a great way to get to younger news consumers, things are not so straightforward. One of the authors of the research, Niamh Burns, told me:
There’s a real tension in how news publishers are thinking about TikTok: on the one hand, the platform offers a huge audience of harder-to-reach young people, and publishers don’t want to be late to the party as some feel they were with other platforms. But beyond that reach, it’s not always clear what’s in it for them- there are next to no established monetisation options for news publishers, and the platform doesn’t offer referral to publishers’ own sites.
Monetisation is a crucial issue here. It is hard enough for creators native to TikTok to make money on there. The creator fund notoriously generates very little income, even for quite popular creators. Brand deals, one of the key ways such people do make an income on TikTok, are going to be difficult, if not impossible, for news outlets to navigate, not least because most advertisers are wary of being associated with hard news.
Burns explained that the challenges news publisher face on TikTok “are common to distribution on any online platform. But they’re heightened in the case of TikTok, in part because it’s nascent, but also because of its inherent design, which is all about keeping users on platform.”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Addition to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.