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Comunicar Journal 71: Hate speech in communication: Research and proposals (Vol. 30 - 2022)

Booktokers: Generating and sharing book content on TikTok

https://doi.org/10.3916/C71-2022-09

Nataly Guiñez-Cabrera

Katherine Mansilla-Obando

Abstract

Reading is essential for learning in education. However, the digital revolution has transformed the ways to encourage reading and learning about books. People who generate and share content about books on social networks are the so-called booktokers, influencers on TikTok who have become an emerging phenomenon in this connected society. However, there is scarce research that studies them in depth. Therefore, it is crucial to explore booktokers to understand them better and to assess why they accept and use technologies to generate and share content about books on TikTok. This paper intends to explore the acceptance and use of TikTok to generate and share content about books on this social network as a booktoker. For this, a qualitative methodology of semi-structured interviews with thirteen Latin American booktokers was used. The analysis was developed through a thematic analysis based on the UTAUT2 theory to explain the findings. The results indicated the categories: performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, hedonic motivation, habit, price value, and a new identified category related to the generation of community and networks. This study constitutes one of the pioneering works in the exploration of the booktoker phenomenon.

Keywords

Virtual communities, education, influencer, reading, books, social media

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