Intro to my Project: Fear and Loathing on TikTok

The date of birth of Gonzo journalism is a subject of some debate–and in fact, there seems to be some disagreement among critics and participants on who is the father. Most would credit Hunter S. Thompson with the invention of the highly subjective, humorous, and generally first-person genre. Thompson himself doesn’t quite claim the bastard kid–he credits Jack Kerouac’s On The Road as “the first breakthrough” as far as what he called “personal journalism,” or the blending of fact and fiction in the pursuit of what some might call the truth.

Regardless of when, where, and from whom Gonzo journalism originated–Gonzo journalism came of age in the late 1970s, and, with a little help from the internet in the late 1990s, spawned an entirely new journalistic genre: citizen journalism. The genre bears a rather self-explanatory name–it’s informational, journalistic content produced by average citizens–not professional journalists–and it tends to share certain qualities with its alternative journalistic parent, such as first-person narratives, comedic presentation, and highly subjective recountings of events. Due to the versatility of the internet–the information superhighway on which citizen journalism thrives–the genre has been adapted to a multitude of different reporting methods. Blogging, vlogging, livetweeting, TikToking–documenting a personal experience or sharing opinions on world events to an audience has never been easier. In an age where everyone has a camera in their pocket and a platform to stand (or more accurately, post) on, anybody can be a journalist, for better or for worse. 

As a child in the 2000s, I was fascinated by the world of journalism. I was obsessed with the idea of becoming a television news broadcaster, and I was enamored with the world of print news. I grew up on a farm in rural central Virginia–one year, when I was still quite young, a storm knocked out our backyard antenna, and from then on we got about three channels: PBS kids, whatever channel my dad was always watching baseball on, and the news. Initially, of course, I was enamoured with the funnies in the newspapers at my grandma’s house (I have a lasting passion for Garfield) and the visual wonders of weather maps on my TV–but at some point, I actually started to appreciate reading articles and listening to what broadcasters were really saying. I was homeschooled throughout my K-12 education, and much of my studies were self-directed–some of my first writing assignments were, by my design, writing newspapers about what was going on in my family’s lives. I was excited to emulate the journalistic world around me, and I hoped to one day be a part of it. 

In my teens, I started taking college classes at Piedmont Virginia Community College. I was immediately drawn to the school newspaper, The Forum, and after a few semesters of journalism classes I began interning as the head editor of the paper. I learned a lot about traditional journalistic standards and practice, and became familiar with the ins and outs of a print newsroom–I also came to recognize how much the field of journalism was beginning to change compared to what I had so enjoyed emulating in my younger years. This was around 2020-2021–during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when everything went digital and when so much of the American public began to question the trustworthiness of mass media outlets. In the summer of 2021, I turned 17, graduated high school, and decided to step away from it all for a while–I got a job, stopped taking college classes, and I stopped considering journalism as a potential career path. But I didn’t stop paying attention to the news, and how people shared them.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, I found it nearly impossible to talk to my friends and coworkers about current events without the phrase “I saw on TikTok that…” entering the conversation. Social media was, evidently, becoming a main avenue for newsgathering among my peers–I was no exception. I witnessed firsthand the way public discourse on politics, public health, and current events was becoming more and more of a social media affair–I saw traditional news outlets soliciting citizen journalists for permission to use their footage on broadcast television, I witnessed constant discourse about the latest Tweets from the White House, I scrolled through endless TikToks reporting and analyzing updates regarding the ongoing pandemic. I never would have known about the Ever Given blocking the Suez Canal in March of 2021 if it hadn’t been memed to death–a new journalistic wave was beginning, what seemed to me bigger and more complicated than the alternative journalistic movements of yesteryear. Citizen journalism was blossoming, and misinformation was everywhere. I had good friends of mine send me TikToks spouting harmful misinformation about communities that myself and my loved ones were a part of, friends who self-diagnosed with psychological disorders based on information that they encountered on TikTok, friends whose algorithm was so far removed from my own that I could hardly imagine we were using the same app. I was frustrated by endless comments on videos asking after information that was included in the video’s caption–or even in the video itself. I began to wonder: where is the skepticism? Is anyone else thinking as hard about these videos as I am?

When I was offered the opportunity to undertake a year-long undergraduate research project with the Mellon Research Fellows, I realized I wanted to think even harder about it. I wanted to become knowledgeable enough about citizen journalism that I could help facilitate the conversation on how to approach and interact with this content among my peers. With this project, I hope to provide some analysis on how citizen journalists operate, how they attempt to fight misinformation, and provide examples as to how we as viewers can think critically about the content they produce–especially through visual analysis, an analytic structure that has been underutilized in the field of journalistic short-form video.