In a previous blog post the role of network communities and the specific example of #BookTok was introduced. It spoke about the power a certain network community can have. In the case of #BookTok, it was how the people who created, shared and viewed content on TikTok, which massively increasing during the pandemic, actually influenced the real-world book market in terms of sales and popularity of certain authors as well as the TikTok app itself. #BookTok has enormous power as a network community.
However, in academia the topic of #BookTok has so far been talked about very little. An exception of this is the article Booktokers: Generating and sharing book content on TikTok by Nataly Guiñez-Cabrera and Katherine Mansilla-Obando which was published in 2022 in the Media Education Research Journal. The goal of the article is to find out about the reasons why people accept and use TikTok to create and share content about books as a so-called BookToker. It is therefore not about #BookTok as a Network Community but about the individuals themselves and why they participate in it which might still give an insight into how such a Network Community is created.
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About the authors
Nataly Guiñez-Cabrera is a Chilean researcher working as an assistant professor at the Universidad del Bío-Bío. Her main area of interest is Marketing.
Katherine Mansilla is also a Chilean researcher who works as an assistant professor at the Universidad Finis Terrae. She has a PhD in Management, and this is also her main area of interest together with sustainability.
About the study
The study on hand deals with the question of why do booktokers accept and use TikTok to generate and share book content? They argue that reading motivation is declining, especially among younger people, and that social media provides a great platform to encourage people to read. The authors introduce TikTok as young people’s favourite social media platform. In general, someone who is sharing content and has acquired expertise in certain areas, has a large amount of followers and has marketing value through their content is called a social media influencers (SMI). In the specific case of #BookTok, those people similar to SMIs are called BookTokers. Those BookTokers talk about books and create content about them through which they create a reading community in which recommendations, discussions of books, characters, writing and fictional places take place. Through this content and the community interest in books and in reading itself is aroused.
Methodology
To answer their exploratory research question, Guiñez-Cabrera and Mansilla adopted a qualitative approach and conducted semi-structed interviews with 13 BookTokers in Latin America. To study the acceptance and use of TikTok as a technology to share content about books, they use the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2) by Venkatesh et al. which includes seven central determinants (performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, hedonic motivation/enjoyment, price value, habit) which influence the behaviour towards the acceptance and usage of technology. The interviews with the BookTokers were done in three parts interested with personal background, the book content produced and TikTok as a platform for this content. The approached the BookTokers to ask for participation in the study on TikTok itself after creating a database of BookTokers using the hashtags #booktok and #booktoker on the app. The interviews were performed by telephone which later were transcribed and analysed using thematic analysis to identify, interpret and define categories.
Results
The research showed that there are eight categories which influence the acceptance and usage of TikTok to share book-related content:
- Performance Activity
- TikTok algorithm
- Content creation as dynamic and fastAttraction of sponsors
- Rewarding relationship with followers
- Effort Expectancy
- Easiness of generating and sharing content
- Habit and practice facilitate use
- Collaboration with other users
- Social Influence
- Support from others is important (family, friends, followers)
- Seeing others do the same influences them to create content themselves
- The pandemic and time spent reading influences people to post book-related content
- Facilitating conditions
- Only need a phone and internet
- Hedonic motivation
- Enjoyment of what is being done
- Enjoyment of sharing their passion for books
- Habit
- Routine of recording and posting content about books
- Feeling of being addicted to TikTok
- Price value
- Time investment/management
- Generation of community and Networks
- Common tastes and relating to others
- Formation of friendships
- Leveraging of individual work
- Influencing of others
As can be seen the BookTokers value TikTok as a platform to share content about the books they read for numerous reasons. For them, TikTok is a platform that is easy to use, and which algorithm helps them reach their audience. The influence they have over others in terms of buying books recommended to them is also attractive to them as well as possible commercial collaborations. The answers of the interviewed BookTokers in this study are in fact all related to the UTAUT2 theory including a new category which is concerned with community and network building.
The Power of Network Communities
Although the study on hand was concerned with the individual perception of and reasons for using TikTok to share book-related content, the study also shows that one of the reasons is the generating of a community. TikTok provides a platform to talk about the common interest of BookTokers and their followers in books and helps creates ties surrounding it. By connecting to other readers von TikTok the lonesome act of reading is becoming a collective, communal one. And with this community a lot can be achieved as the previous blog post has shown.
The study by Guiñez-Cabrera and Mansilla certainly has some shortcomings in terms of generalizability, however it is one of the first academic articles which focuses on the phenomenon of #BookTok. In order to analyse the power this specific network community has it is a step in the right direction. It might inspire some further research that is certainly needed to study this phenomenon more in depth which is strongly encouraged.
Source:
Guiñez-Cabrera, N., & Mansilla-Obando, K. (2022). Booktokers: Generating and sharing book content on TikTok. [Booktokers: Generar y compartir contenidos sobre libros a través de TikTok]. Comunicar, 71, 119-130. https://doi.org/10.3916/C71-2022-09
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