1157607 research-article20232023 SMSXXX10.1177/20563051231157607Social Media + SocietyCervi and Divon Special Issue: TikTok and Social Movements Social Media + Society Playful Activism: Memetic Performances January-March 2023: 1­–13 © The Author(s) 2023 Article reuse guidelines: of Palestinian Resistance in TikTok sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/20563051231157607 https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051231157607 #Challenges journals.sagepub.com/home/sms Laura Cervi1 and Tom Divon2 Abstract Palestinians have long been using social media as a tool for activism. Each platform provides unique socio-technological affordances that shape users’ communicative practices as networked publics. Focusing on the video-sharing platform TikTok, which has taken a “serious turn” in recent years, this article examines how Palestinian users performed playful acts of resistance during the escalation of violence between Palestinians and Israelis in May 2021. Applying a multimodal analysis to 500 TikTok videos posted during the conflict under #gazaunderattack, we identify three memetic templates (#challenge)— (1) lip-syncing, (2) duets, and (3) point-of-view—that unfold the ways TikTok’s design and its play-based affordances ignite affective streams of audiovisual content that render playful activism in times of conflict. Driven by TikTok’s culture of imitation and competition, playful activism enables the participation of ordinary users in political emerging events with the help of looping meme videos composed of collaborative, dialogic, and communal socio-technical functions. Playful activism transforms users’ ritualized performances into powerful political instruments on TikTok and makes democratic participation more relatable, tangible, and accessible to various audiences. Keywords TikTok, playful activism, affordances, memes, performance, Palestinians, #gazaunderattack Introduction the dominant media narrative, thus democratizing the narra- tive by introducing new voices and perspectives and laying The “TikTok intifada”: This is how media described the the foundations for a new kind of web-based activism Israel-Gaza warfare that occurred in May 2021 (Ward, 2021). (Monshipouri & Prompichai, 2018). The mediatization of The escalation of violence between Palestinians and Israelis the conflict has now entered the third phase, due to the pres- was ignited over an Israeli court decision to evict Palestinian ence of social media (Monshipouri & Prompichai, 2018). families from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Acknowledging that each platform enables unique socio- Jarrah. This controversial decision led to violent riots begin- technological environments, this article looks at the emer- ning on 6 May 2021 and spreading into Israel and the West gence of TikTok in the mediatization of the conflict and how Bank, eventually culminating in the Israeli military operation it is changing and broadening contemporary digital activism “Guardian of the Walls” in Gaza. The conflict resulted in 250 practices by encouraging users to immerse in a more playful Palestinian and 10 Israeli casualties, and it lasted until the and creative narrative of resistance. official ceasefire on May 20 (Kingsley, 2021). First, we examine the existing literature about Palestinian Social media have played a central role in mediating the digital activism. Second, we focus on TikTok’s specific Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Scholars distinguish between affordances, disclosing how they favor the emergence of a two main phases of mediatization: In the first phase, accord- ing to Wolfsfeld (1997), mass media were the only source of information until the mid-1990s, leading to curated media 1 Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain frames conveying the narration of the conflict. In the second 2 The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel phase, from the beginning of the 2000s, the rapid adoption Corresponding Author: of internet blogs and other spaces for citizen journalism and Tom Divon, Mount Scopus, 9190500, Jerusalem. personal expression allowed evasion of state control over Email: tom.divon@mail.huji.ac.il Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). 2 Social Media + Society novel type of activism, “playful activism,” that we define as Digital Activism and the Palestinian an affordance-based form of performance empowering the Cause participation of ordinary users in emerging socio-political events through adaptable memetic templates of content cre- Palestinians have used social media since internet access was ation. Third, we analyze 500 TikTok videos using a multi- enabled in the occupied territories during the second intifada modal approach and unfold the platform’s vernaculars of (Nabulsi, 2014). Firstly, online mobility has become part of play and affect used by Palestinian users to convey their nar- Palestinian users’ alternatives to a physical lack of mobility, ratives. Finally, we conclude that TikTok’s play-centric allowing the creation of a new “immaterial territory” affordances and their distinguishable audiovisual vocabular- (Rousselin, 2016, p. 11) of daily participation that connects ies endorse playful activism by provoking powerful senti- geographically remote communities and reconnects Palestinian ment bonds that connect and allow scattered users to diasporas. Second, this cross-territory configuration of medi- territorialize around a common cause. ated interaction through digital platforms allows Palestinians to reach imagined collectives with whom they engage for civic and political purposes (Papacharissi & de Fatima Oliveira, The Rise of Digital Activism 2012), contributing to a counter-visual narration of Palestine Digital activism has been defined as “digital technologies (Mislán & Shaban, 2019). used to expedite change in the political and social realms” Social media platforms have influenced Palestinian activ- (Joyce, 2010, p. 36). Shaped by the penetration of the inter- ism to such an extent that some scholars consider them the net, digital activism marks the beginning of a new era for new “war zone” (Li & Prasad, 2018, p. 505) in the Israeli– social movements, providing human agents with opportuni- Palestinian conflict. Adopting videos as their prominent ties to convey their stories, increase their projection, and visual grammar online, Palestinian activists have mainly transform them into global phenomena (Chen et al., 2021). used what Askanius (2013) categorizes as testimonial videos Digital activism appears to be closely entwined with (or citizen journalism/witnessing), offering audiences world- social media platforms’ architectural affordances, under- wide a real-time window into the mundane violence and bru- stood as the “multifaceted relational structure between an tality to which they are routinely subjected. Posted on object/technology and the user that enables or constrains audiovisual platforms, these instantaneous, “caught-by-the- potential behavioral outcomes in a particular context” camera” videos convey a sense of authenticity coming from (Evans et al., 2017, p. 36). In particular, the access to film- ordinary people, capitalizing on the platform’s affordance for making, editing, uploading, and streaming technologies has an immediate impression of events that engender an emo- transformed video into a central tool for social movement tional reaction and enhancing solidarity. activists online (Askanius, 2013). This display of raw first-person testimonial videos has Digital activism is not entirely subjected to human agency, become Palestinian activists’ primary communicative response being circumscribed and developed within proprietary plat- to all significant military offensives. During “Operation Cast forms that can “affect the development and success of social Lead,” a massive military assault on the Gaza Strip in 2008, movements” (Cammaerts, 2012, p. 119). Activists are forced Palestinians collectively conveyed counter-narratives through to accept the rules of use imposed by private platforms, Facebook and YouTube (Najjar, 2009). In 2014, during which define how activism circulates online (Nunes De “Operation Protective Edge,” tweets related to #gazaunderat- Sousa & Cervi, 2017; Treré, 2015). For example, during the tack showed livestreams of Palestinians living in conditions of Black Lives Matter protests in the United States in 2020, war, enabling real-time experience of a battlefield focusing on Black activists’ videos associated with the #BLM hashtag strong graphic content (Siapera et al., 2015). were downplayed by TikTok (Shead, 2020). Another exam- More recently, in 2020, after the killing of a young autistic ple is the algorithmic censorship of feminist Instagram posts Palestinian named Eyad al-Hallaq by Israeli Police, the resisting the platform’s nudity policy (Faust, 2017). #JusticeForEyad campaign was organized on Instagram. Within this platform-user power relation, platforms cre- Subsequently, following the US wave of protests by the ate or inhibit different openings for collective action. #BlackLivesMatter movement after the death of George Accordingly, in this study, we unpack the emergence of Floyd, Palestinians featured memes in their Instagram’s sto- digital activism on the video-sharing platform TikTok. We ries showing pictures of al-Hallaq and Floyd and calling for claim that conventional practices of online video activism #PalestinianLivesMatter (Mislán & Shaban, 2019). This are undergoing rapid transformation, with activists adopt- communalized force of networked publics is not only adjust- ing and repurposing the imaginative, affective, and playful ing its practices according to specific online environments, elements of TikTok’s video content. However, before delv- but it also adopts the cross-platform nature of affective pub- ing into the Palestinian multimodal memetic videos on lics (Papacharissi, 2016, p. 308) as it “assemble[s] around TikTok, we first illuminate the reciprocal presence of plat- media and platforms that invite affective attunement, support forms, users, and content that encapsulates the performance affective investment, and propagate affectively charged of Palestinian activism in the online world. expression.” Cervi and Divon 3 TikTok and Vernaculars of Playfulness 2012). Internet communication technologies provide a plethora of tools that allow activists to explore, experience, Since its international launch in 2017, TikTok has become and experiment, “playful subversion” (Fróes & Tosca, 2018) one of the most influential video-sharing platforms world- or “playful resistance” (Huang & Liu, 2022). The affor- wide, reaching one billion unique users in 2021 (Silberling, dances of social network sites extend an invitation to audi- 2021). The platform’s Chinese ownership and relation with ences who are conventionally hard to reach to engage in a the government, together with issues of content moderation, playful acquaintance with political issues (Cervi et al., made TikTok subject to heightened scrutiny (Zeng & Kaye, 2021). This allows the weaving of activism into unexpected 2022). For example, one report claimed that the platform dis- formats like memes and vernaculars of parody and humor, seminated state propaganda, whitewashing Beijing’s abuses lowering barriers to political participation and eliciting in Xinjiang (Perper, 2019). “playful citizenship” (Glas et al., 2019). Recent studies (Hautea et al., 2021; Vijay & Gekker, Therefore, we examine TikTok’s structuring principles of 2021) have shed light on how TikTok became the locus for playfulness, following Songer and Miyata’s (2014) explora- activism. As Abidin (2020) explains, by mixing the “perfor- tion of “playful affordances” in digital platforms, that invite mativity of YouTube, the scrolling interface of Instagram, four qualities of users’ play experiences: play as (1) contest– and the deeply weird humor usually reserved for platforms challenge based, (2) seeking exploration–discovery, (3) like Vine and Tumblr,” TikTok’s complex textures enable inviting imagination–creativity, and (4) allowing the feeling users to become activists, politically engaged “in a format of sensation–arousal. On the basis of these four qualities, we that is entertaining, educational, and palatable among their claim that playful activism manifests in TikTok’s configura- peers” (p. 84). tions of the #challenge practice, allowing users to flicker TikTok is considered an “experimental audiovisual between modes of playful usage (Songer & Miyata, 2014). playground” (Klug, 2020, p. 6), where users choose how Corresponding to the contest–challenge affordance, social to shape their self-made videos using various functions. media challenges are play-based collaborative tasks governed TikTok’s rich set of vernaculars mobilizes users’ partici- by a set of performative rules in which users are encouraged to pation in many socio-political activities, contextualized in co-opt a competitive creative mission initiated by random the platform’s playful and humorous cultures. For exam- users (Klug, 2020). This requires users to dialogue with trend- ple, disabled users harness TikTok’s vernacular of collab- ing videos featuring mimetic elements (text, movement, and orative dance routines to resist ableism (Duval et al., sound) that then circulate as viral performances. Given their 2021), and Jewish users use cynical attitude to counteract potential to travel outside the individual’s social boundaries hate speech and fight religious stereotypes (Divon & into the public discourse, challenges are highly politicized on Ebbrecht-Hartmann, 2022). TikTok and used to raise awareness, spread ideologies, and Building on an interdisciplinary understanding of play “externalize personal political opinion via an audiovisual act” and its relationship to the political realm, we explore how (Medina-Serrano et al., 2020, p. 264). TikTok’s affordances and vernaculars, enabled by the tech- Corresponding with the exploration–discovery affor- nological infrastructure of features, trends and aesthetics, dance, the search for challenges on TikTok is enabled by allow playful activism to weave into TikTok’s digital-play adding hashtags to the caption of any video, not only afford- architecture. In exploring playful activism, we wish to ing individuals the ability to connect to an audience comprehend how the tension between play and political (Eriksson Krutrök, 2021) but also becoming “vehicles for participation becomes blurred as content on TikTok can be exploring playful interaction” (Pearce & Pardo, 2009, p. 75) “simultaneously serious, insightful, and amusing for par- and inviting publics to gather around specific issues. ticipants” (Tully & Ekdale, 2014, p. 69). This mix is part of Moreover, hashtags themselves can be seen as play tools for the rising “serious TikTok” climate, where users playfully virality, with users experimenting with different combina- unpack, contextualize, and provide information on socio- tions as part of their desire to be “algorithmically recogniz- political issues using the platform’s trends and dialects able” (Gillespie, 2014). (Ebbrect-Hartmann & Divon, 2022). Play, according to Huizinga (1949/1970), encompasses various human activities which move beyond leisure and are Memetic Templates for Affective driven by a “ludic attitude” that conveys playfulness (Zimmerman, 2008, p. 161). Play and its seemingly frivo- Creation lous atmosphere have penetrated various public domains, For the imagination-creativity affordance, social media chal- such as education, politics, and media, while interrupting lenges offer templates for content creation. Templates are the rhythm of serious matters (Zou, 2022). In the study of audiovisual repertoires composed of the platform’s “unique social movements, play has been found to be a popular prac- combination of styles, grammars, and logics” (Gibbs et al., tice among activists, infusing movements with creativity, 2015, p. 257) that afford an accessible, expressible, and relat- and ludic qualities that enrich civic participation (Shepard, able framework within which ordinary users can create. 4 Social Media + Society Although templates on TikTok grant users creative auton- Affective practice is also influenced by the agency of non- omy, they are also circumscribed (Kaye et al., 2021), shaped, human forces, such as the architecture of social media plat- and compromised by the platform’s recommendation system forms (Warfield, 2018). On TikTok, challenge templates (Leaver et al., 2020). We recognized three challenge tem- become a novel practice for materializing affect on two inter- plates on TikTok’s curated content feed (the “for you” page) connected levels; the first is the structural level. TikTok’s that are driven by popular trends, features, and aesthetics: (1) challenges are actively promoted by the recommendation lip-syncing, (2) Duet, and (3) point-of-view (POV). system and therefore are algorithmically programmed for In a lip-syncing challenge, users are summoned to play virality (Klug, 2020). They reinforce users’ affective attach- with potentially infinite music databases organized around ments as they enable them to align with prevailing trends and audio templates that are available in the “use this sound” fea- offer the prospect of exposure in exchange. This dynamics ture (Abidin & Kaye, 2021). Users frequently draw upon catalysts users to contribute to TikTok’s culture of chal- particular song lyrics, short music excerpts, or informal col- lenges, which manifests in forceful streams of memetic vid- loquial expressions, remixing and repurposing while adding eos that accumulate affective power with each new loop, “their personal storyline and/or visual narrative” (Zeng & reiteration, and dissemination (Ahmed, 2004). The second Abidin, 2021, p. 12). level is the users’ body. Affect is engendered by the plat- In a Duet challenge, users react (or “reply”) to an original form’s vernacular of body performativity, in which users video by juxtaposing videos side-by-side where they can be enlist their bodies to create successful meme-based chal- viewed in tandem and replicating the Duet for comparison or lenge videos that will be credited with algorithmic attention. adding commentary as a compliment or critique. The Duet Meaning, users’ mediatized bodies “become both the medium on TikTok can be a playful tool for political engagement of the meme and its message” (Shifman, 2012, p. 200) as because it is centered on the democratic ideals of dialogue they re-enact the actions of others, allowing their bodies to while igniting an online public debate among users with drive affective resonance through digital spaces and create communalized purposes (Medina-Serrano et al., 2020). collective action across topics (Papacharissi, 2015). In a POV challenge, users implement the cinematic aes- Thus, while affect is created in the node between bodies thetic of point-of-view by impersonating others to vehiculate and technology (Paasonen, 2015), as a practice, it flashes their perspective on a specific issue. This form of observa- TikTok challenges with various modalities, including platfor- tion establishes a dialogic setting in which the performing mative elements (sound, image, text, filter effects, duration, user becomes the subject of the viewer’s POV. On TikTok, loop, etc.), and performative elements (hand gestures, body users harness the POV challenges’ performative dimensions postures, facial expressions, etc.). These modalities serve as in novel ways, transforming them into political spectacles to ways for users to build affective spaces within a community raise awareness about and visibility for victims of controver- that can negotiate identity (Jaramillo-Dent et al., 2022) and sial issues, such as gender and race. affiliate with a unique storytelling environment that sparks In this context of imagination–creativity, challenge tem- feelings of belonging (Vizcaíno-Verdú & Abidin, 2022). plates on TikTok become memes. As digital units “loaded on various vehicles: images, texts, artifacts or rituals” (Shifman, 2014, p. 366), memes are the outputs of user-generated con- Method tent that are reproduced by imitation and spread rapidly, often with creative variations. TikTok challenge templates Data Collection are complex multimodal memes configured by layers of Acknowledging that hashtags are valuable frameworks for video, text, and sound. Challenges inhabit the platform’s understanding memetic media (Highfield & Leaver, 2015), we force of mimesis as the common feature of what Zulli and focused on the trending hashtag #gazaunderattack (535.1 mil- Zulli (2022, p. 7) identify as “imitation publics,” referring to lion views), previously used on Twitter by Palestinian users the “collection of people whose digital connectivity is con- (Siapera et al., 2015). To gain familiarity with the hashtag, we stituted through the shared ritual of content imitation.” applied the walkthrough method (Light et al., 2018), scrolling Corresponding to the sensation-arousal affordance, as through TikTok’s hashtag page to delve “into how apps frame part of the play on TikTok, challenge templates invite users users’ self-expression, relationships and interactions” (p. 897). to perform emotionality as a generator of their virality. Users’ The hashtag page served as a repository of users’ audiovisual mediatization of emotions can be seen as an affective prac- engagements throughout the Israeli–Palestinian conflict of tice, described by Smith et al. (2018, p. 13) as “human activ- May 2021. Aiming to explore the platform’s affordances at ity where emotions are the specific and principal focus of the multiple levels, the walkthrough method allowed us to create practice.” We use this lens to examine how TikTok is “a step-by-step observation and documentation” of users’ use designed to modulate and amplify affect, elicited through of “screens, features, and flows of activity,” examining the users’ doings, or, put differently, how users recruit and mobi- “technological mechanisms and embedded cultural references lize their visual and discursive sentiments and feelings to do to understand how it guides users and shapes their experi- work for social, cultural, and political goals. ences” (Light et al., 2018, p. 882). Cervi and Divon 5 Following this method, we focused on the platform’s The memetic form is the first descriptive level at which human and nonhuman actors, learning their symbiotics, we analyzed the templates of content and style, through seeking to understand how TikTok’s #challenge templates which memes are delivered in each video, according to three afford user participation in the Palestinian conflict and how aspects: audio feature, visual feature, and performance fea- users were leveraging different features, practices, and ture. We paid attention to the user’s unique uses of multifac- styles to playfully engage with conflict-related content. eted modes of communication integrated into the creation of Accordingly, we manually scrolled through the #gazaunder- imitated challenge videos, such as the technical (in-app edit- attack page, looking at videos uploaded from May 1, 2021 ing techniques), creative (inventive uses of the medium), and (5 days before the Sheik Jarrah riots) to May 30, 2021 temporal (brevity, looping, or repetition of content) modes. (10 days after the ceasefire), creating a repository of 2,000 Communicative function refers to the explicit purpose that videos in an external file classified by video ID, date of each challenge video conveys. Within this level, we also posting, duration, background music, captioned hashtags, scrutinized the metalinguistic (integration of emoticons or types of features used, comments, views, shares, and likes. emojis), hypertextual (usage of hashtags or intertextual refer- ences), and creative (inventive uses of the medium) modes. Finally, to interpret the affective practice (Smith et al., 2018), Data Sampling we focused on the various platformative and performative To build our analysis corpus, we adopted a purposive sam- elements of doing affect on TikTok, intended as platforms pling technique (Sandelowski, 1995), allowing us to “deliber- and users’ visible ways of eliciting emotions, sensations, and ately look for information-rich cases that capture analytically sentiments among dispersed masses of users. important variations in the target phenomenon” (p. 81). We included videos that had more than 1,000 likes and more than 150 shares, signaling that the video was indeed of interest to Findings users. Moreover, for study convenience, we selected videos “A’atuna Al Toufoule”: Performing Activism that were either in English or decipherable by us, and removed Through Lip-Syncing and Makeup any identifiable users’ details in our screengrab images due to the topic’s vulnerability (Franzke et al., 2020). The first challenge we identified was a lip-sync challenge to Recognizing that TikTok videos convey ambivalent con- the song “A’atuna Al Toufoule” (“Give Us the Childhood”), tent, “leaving the viewers to derive meaning from their own a hit song from the 1980s by Palestinian–Lebanese child knowledge” (Hautea et al., 2021, p. 2), we each first assessed singer Remi Bendali, re-popularized on YouTube by Sabyan prominent descriptive characteristics of the data set, identify- Gambus, an Islamic Indonesian teen music group. On ing and distinguishing repetitive patterns of multimodal con- TikTok, this template was first used by an Indonesian who tent using the similar vernacular of features, practices, and lip-synced the song while recording herself in a close-up shot aesthetics that sparked a memetic reaction (or meme chal- demonstrating a makeup routine. The video portrays the lenge). Then, we compared their content after prolonged dis- Indonesian user’s face as a canvas for the recontextualization cussion, and agreed on the identification of three recurrent of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. After applying her founda- challenge videos composing a sample of 500 unique items: tion and concealer, quick edits show the user covered with (1) the “A’atuna Al Toufoule” lip-syncing challenge (n = 200), bruises while the “Palestinian Lives Matter” slogan is writ- (2) the “Stand Up” Duet challenge (n = 200), and (3) the ten in “blood” on the user’s forehead, and the Palestinian flag Mariam Afifi POV challenge (n = 100). is drawn with makeup on her cheek (see Figure 1a). Toward the end of the video, using the platform’s effects, her eye turns transparent and displays videos of Palestinian people Data Analysis protesting, against a background of the user’s semi-transpar- Applying multimodal content analysis (Kress & Van ent figure. Leeuwen, 2020), we focused on layers of spoken and written This video generated a memetic flux in which other users language, still and moving images, sound, gesture, body pos- harnessed this challenge as their template in various ways. ture, movement, and so on. Our analysis framework is Unpacking this meme form, we identified three main perfor- inspired by Shifman’s (2014) idea of memes as intercon- mative variations, all characterized by the same lip-syncing nected micro-units of knowledge that illuminate macro-nar- and music: (1) users (mainly female) imitated and repro- ratives of social groups, Zeng and Abidin’s (2021) duced similar music, visual, and performative elements as in considerations of TikTok’s “meme categorization,” and the initial video; (2) users kept the same video performance Songer and Miyata’s (2014) “playful affordances.” Within but (re)interpreted the makeup routine using more sophisti- this theoretical grid, we analyzed our videos according to cated body art techniques, such as substituting bruises with three content levels, ranging from descriptive to interpreta- scars or bullet holes and adding theatrical elements like cos- tive: (1) memetic form, (2) communication function, and (3) tumes designed to amplify the narrative of victimization; and affective practice. (3) users kept the same performance but expressed a more 6 Social Media + Society Figure 1. Variations of the A’atuna Al Toufoule challenge. diverse range of performative gestures conveyed through Lip-syncing and makeup performances are an affordance- distinctive facial expressions while replacing bruises with dependent evolution of Palestinian testimonial videos, which political visualizations or symbols of the conflict (like stones, according to Askanius (2013) are meant to bear witness to maps, and flags), and using images from past wars. In addi- injustices. Prior to TikTok, the display of bloodcurdling tion, the users painted hashtagged slogans like #stoptheoc- images of Israeli attacks (bomb explosions, dead bodies, cupation and #tragedy on their faces. etc.) was Palestinians’ most conspicuous audiovisual lan- From the communicative function perspective, the genre guage online, enabling audiences to witness and generate of makeup tutorials used in this challenge pivoted from empathy for Palestinians’ suffering (Siapera et al., 2015). In entertainment to the political. Users’ faces became physical TikTok’s playful templates, the Palestinians’ adversity takes templates for politically charged artistic creations, allowing on a (self-)performative form. Users supersede crude, real- the performance of Palestinian resistance. In online culture, life images with metaphorical representations of what the makeup tutorials invite users to creatively experiment, medi- Israeli oppression “does” to their bodies. Some substitute tate, and play with self-representation using audiovisual images of injured or dead bodies with paintings of bruises on components. On TikTok, makeup tutorials frequently become their faces, signaling the violence enforced on the Palestinians activist acts (Abidin, 2020), where “bodies become both the (see Figure 1b). Instead of using explicit images of the inti- vehicle for action and the action itself: medium and mes- fada fighters (i.e., stone throwers), some users gesture toward sage” (Calkins, 2014, p. 2). In the case of Muslim female the existence of those fighters while holding stones in their users, body art and makeup are often used as practices of hands, thus symbolically embodying their videos with resis- protest. A prominent example occurred in 2019 when tance (see Figure 1c). The same is true for waving the 17-year-old human rights activist Feroza Aziz used TikTok Palestinian flag, showing pieces of wire fence, or wearing to call out violence against Uyghur Muslims in China in a the keffiyeh (see Figure 1c). All are theatrical ways in which makeup routine that went viral (“TikTok Apologises,” 2019). “artifacts of performance create the context” (Boyd & Heer, Examined within the affective practice, lip-syncing is a 2006, p. 4) in which users harness various symbols of war to performative act rooted in drag culture (Kaminski & Taylor, promote an accessible and desirable reading of the conflict. 2008) in which the musical intensity, together with lip-sync With their playful use of TikTok’s editing features (quick techniques to maximize mouth-to-music matching, has cuts, effects, and sound), users gradually reveal and express become a popular genre on TikTok. Accompanied by users’ their Palestinian identity in this challenge. Their plain faces, hand gestures, lip-syncing is a “codified way of expressing to which they keep adding layers of makeup, evolve, with affect” (Rettberg, 2017, p. 1) where the lips, the lyrics, and each body movement being synchronized with the music’s the music orchestrate a particular energy, mood, or move- beat and editing cut (see Figure 1d). This choreography not ment for users to affect each other by playing along. The lip- only showcases their artistic choices (i.e., drawn Palestinian syncing templates on TikTok share qualities of spreadability flags) but also serves as the foundation for the challenge’s and legibility and become powerful memetic media (Abidin structure of feelings (Papacharissi, 2016) as it fosters affec- & Kaye, 2021), allowing users of this challenge to (re)tell the tive bonds among peers that lead to the proliferation of imi- story of Palestinian suffering using a song interpreted by a tated and circulated versions of those videos. children’s choir (and thus infusing it with pathos). This song Following the challenge’s template, in the second half of has become a symbol of the melancholic, war-scarred child- the videos, Palestinians’ life under Israeli authority is dis- hood with which most Palestinians identify. played with the help of TikTok’s transparency effect. Users Cervi and Divon 7 Figure 2. Duets and triplets reacting to the IDF soldier’s video. transform their right eye into a “projector” and screen a curated Together we are going spectacle of their lived experiences amidst the chaos of war (see Figure 1e). Used as an affective practice for activists to To a brand new home. convey their resistance (Gonzalez, 2022), the users’ gaze in this moment of projection matches the viewers’ and facilitates In response, Moe Zein, a Palestinian–Lebanese singer a confrontational relationship with the Israeli authorities, famous for his parodies and mashups of popular songs, being their presented enemy. responded with a Duet, receiving 24.3 million views as of As users “tak[e] control over their own stories and identi- October 2021. Zein posted a close-up of himself singing ties” (Gonzalez, 2022, p. 260), they saturate their videos along to the same song but changing the lyrics to “Yes please with political imagery that is considered inflammatory (e.g., stand up / Take your people with you / Leave the children violent Palestinian arrests or terror attack scenes) while happy away from all the tragedies,” asking Israel to leave the interchangeably playing between the roles of victim, wit- occupied territories. On the same screen, a window showing ness, and perpetrator. This challenge’s replicability and videos of Palestinian tragedies (e.g., bombs, airstrikes, and mutability demonstrate TikTok’s culture of participatory suffering people) appears on the right side (see Figure 2b). and memetic performance, leading users to work as a com- Zein’s reply video generated a trend in which other users cre- munal force in which their “social identities are drawn ated Duets with the IDF soldier, where they sang Zein’s ver- together in common pursuit and through their performative sion of the song and/or added their own lyrics. roles” (Petrovic, 2022, p. 2). Unpacking this meme form, we identified two main varia- tions, characterized by the same feature of sound and genre of Duet but using different derivatives in visuals and perfor- “Stand Up”: Musical Duets as an mance. In the first variation, users recorded themselves in Affective Activism Dialogue close-up shots singing beside the IDF soldier using Zein’s version of the song in Duets or “Triplets,” including both the The second identified challenge was a Duet meme chal- IDF soldier and Zein himself along with the user. The perfor- lenge in response to the video of an Israeli Defense Force mative value of the videos lies in the theatrical expressions (IDF) soldier in which she lip-syncs the song “Stand Up” of the users’ reactions. In the second variation, users also dis- (see Figure 2a), accumulating 7.3 million views as of played political symbols (e.g., keffiyeh, Palestinian flag) October 2021. “Stand Up” is the lead single from the while incorporating graphic images (e.g., children dying, soundtrack of the movie Harriet, depicting the life of US people crying). In this case, the performative value lies in the abolitionist and political activist Harriet Tubman, and it is users’ attrezzo (e.g., symbols of Palestinian identity) and the considered an anthem for freedom and human rights. The display of suffering. IDF soldier posted a video of herself lip-syncing this spe- From the perspective of communicative function, these cific extract from the song: videos can be paired with what Askanius (2013) defines as political mash-up videos, in which users merge pre-existing And I don’t mind if I lose any blood on the way to salvation materials from multiple sources to construct a political argu- And I’ll fight with the strength that I got until I die ment. However, the grievance narrative that characterizes Palestinian social media communications, with the help of That’s when I’m gonna stand up TikTok’s Duet feature, is being translated into a parodic and satiric “answer” to the Israeli provocation presented in the Take my people with me original video. Parody, a dominant audiovisual dialect of 8 Social Media + Society TikTok users (Divon & Ebbrecht-Hartmann, 2022), is a cre- volume of victimization. The users’ emotionalization became ative work designed to imitate and/or mock its subject by visible in their own memetic versions, showing a range of means of satiric or ironic imitation (Tryon, 2008). In this facial expressions, such as sadness or acts of crying while challenge, Zein and many other co-creators not only ironi- listening to Zein’s version (see Figure 2 g). cally unmask the contradiction of using the song “Stand Up” As social media became the new “war zone” of the as an anthem of freedom to defend a state of occupation, but Israeli–Palestinian conflict (Li & Prasad, 2018), the various they also use this trend to expose atrocities and children’s memetic creations of the Duet display the users’ ability to use suffering using imagery of victimhood. different affordance-based playful “weapons.” Conveyed This playful form of resistance can be defined as a type of with artful tactics of resistance, users’ co-performances forge “creative insurgency” (Kraidy, 2016) since words, songs, alternative routes for fighting social injustice without and images can function as an alternative to actual violence renouncing the need to show cruel realities. Moreover, as (or act in tandem with actual violence) for the purpose of accessible templates for activism, these playful performances reaching political goals. In this sense, Zein and others’ cre- have a lower participation threshold than traditional protests ative performances are germane to the kinds of revolutionary (Shepard, 2012). They allow users to play with multi-layered actions that have become popular in the Palestinian resis- dialogic modes and to take an active role in the conflict as tance legacy, such as chanting slogans, spraying graffiti, and they express their feelings of solidarity, indignation, and building barricades. In addition, this challenge communi- anger and creatively articulate their political position. cates TikTok’s powerful nature of competition. By capital- izing on the platform’s tendency to disseminate and expose Mariam Afifi’s Smile of Resistance: POV videos associated with trending challenges (Klug, 2020), users were calling others to Duet with Zein’s version using Challenges as Co-Constructed Empathy the caption section on their videos in an attempt to suppress The third challenge that we identified is a POV challenge the IDF soldier’s original video. Downplaying the Israeli dedicated to Mariam Afifi, a 19-year-old Palestinian activist version and concealing it from the “algorithmic eye” (Abidin, who became known due to a viral video of her smiling while 2020) amplified the virality of Zein’s “hijacked” version of being beaten and handcuffed by an Israeli soldier in a protest the challenge, making it more visible to random scrollers on against Israeli authorities (Gill, 2021). Within a matter of the “For You” page. hours after her detention by an Israeli soldier, Afifi’s video Although users made various memetic performances of rapidly achieved viral status, garnering widespread support Zein’s video, as a public, they communicated in one coherent from hundreds of users who demanded her immediate release voice. Following the Duet template, users took advantage of from prison. These individuals not only endorsed Afifi’s TikTok’s play tools like the Green Screen feature to immerse active participation in the protest, but also helped to amplify themselves in disputed sites (e.g., the Dome of the Rock in a potent and politically charged narrative across a range of Jerusalem; see Figure 2c), or in sites of struggle (e.g., refu- social media platforms (see Figure 3a). gee camps in Gaza; see Figure 2d). Some used the image On TikTok, Palestinians and their supporters transformed juxtaposition to resonate with the ongoing and inflammatory her video into a challenge in which they enrolled as re-enac- geographical debate with Israel by showing a map of tors of the moment of her arrest, using the POV aesthetic and Palestine with Jerusalem as its capital, in an attempt to make applying various strategies to convey her presence. In the amends for historical injustice while calling to “fight back first variation, users wore dark red hijabs, thereby intertextu- for the stolen lands” (see Figure 2e). ally connecting to Afifi’s hijab in the original footage. Using From the affective practice perspective, by substituting the platform’s Green Screen function, users immersed them- new words for the original song and by focusing on suffering selves in a “protest” and lip-synced Afifi’s words to the and struggle, users infused their creations with an emotional Israeli soldier during her arrest, trying to convince the imag- resonance that echoed among distant individuals (Mühlhoff, ined other (“the enemy”) that it was their right to protest. A 2015), who reacted with memetic versions. In this sense, the sudden edit cut shows the re-enacted Afifi with facial memefied challenge melody sparked an affective dissemina- “bruises” due to the violent behavior of the unseen enemy. tion that rapidly connected disorganized crowds “discur- In a second variation, users are shown kneeling in the sively called into being” (Papacharissi, 2015, p. 6). Some position of handcuffed hostages held by the imagined enemy, users adapted to TikTok’s multimodality of sound and sup- wearing dark red shirts to connect with Afifi’s hijab, covered ported Zein’s singing with musical instruments. For exam- with mimicked bruises, and displaying expressions of pain ple, one user played the violin while displaying popular while being treated violently (e.g., they are thrown to the Palestinian symbols (e.g., the keffiyeh), and accompanying floor and the enemy steps on their necks). In a third variation, text said, “My heart breaks for the kids” (see Figure 2f). This users record themselves smiling into a mirror while an over- performative practice expressed the user’s closeness to the laid caption states, “You smile when you know Allah is with Palestinian cause and thereby amplified the emotional you” or “ (. . .) when you know justice is with you.” In a Cervi and Divon 9 Figure 3. Variations on the Mariam Afifi POV challenge. fourth variation, TikTok users are physically absent in the their neck, portraying a fatal scenario of suffocation (see videos but convey resistance by showing slideshows of smil- Figure 3c). ing Palestinian activists at various protests. Users were operating TikTok’s features and trends to From a performative perspective, although utilizing dif- establish community building (Vizcaíno-Verdú & Abidin, ferent features, all four variations have a similar visual hook, 2022), showing solidarity with other users against Israeli with TikTok’s aesthetic of the POV affording creative reme- authorities through a “digital allyship praxis” (Clark, 2019). diation of Afifi’s smiling image. The users’ playful role was Palestinian and non-Palestinian users linked to each other’s fostered by performances of makeup, costuming, props, and POV videos not only to amplify the trend on the “For You” scenery. This enabled viewers to observe and users to re- page but also to broaden the perspective of “both the allies enact events as if they were conveyed by Afifi’s eyes and and members of their personal communities” (Clark, 2019, voice. Afifi’s video has undergone a “memetic reproduction” p. 12) about their lives in a constant state violence, and to call (Rossolatos, 2015) similar to the trajectory of the iconic them to witness the events (see Figure 3d). image of George Floyd that became ubiquitous in Afifi’s POV challenge promoted a preferred reading of #BlackLivesMatter protests. Afifi’s smile also carries the the conflict, in which the Palestinians face discrimination visual value of “meme-worthiness” (Zimmer & Carson, by the Israeli forces in spaces of free protest, with no 2018), motivating the intense circulation of controversial enacted violence (“she was just sitting there”). The images content and turning the smile into an available “cultural rep- that circulated of Afifi’s smile and of many other Palestinian ertoire of vernacular video” (Burgess, 2008, p. 6). protesters who were captured with a smile while being The communicative intention of this challenge can be arrested (see Figure 3e) preserve the typical dichotomies of seen as an attempt to forefront the story of Afifi’s arrest as a oppressed and oppressor that move beyond the Israeli– counter-narrative to mainstream media, dominated and Palestinian conflict. Viewers can identify a familiar power described by the hegemonic Israeli narrative of Palestinian dynamic (that uses force) while watching Afifi’s arrest, and resistance as “terrorism” (Najjar, 2009). By playing the role they might identify her meme-smile as “defying the norma- of a victim and integrating photo testimonies that rationalize tive scripts of the colonial relationship” (Bhungalia, 2020, Afifi’s acts and vehemently disapprove of her arrest “just for p. 400), in which one should not smile in the face of mili- defending a girl being beaten by an officer,” users provide tary power. global audiences with the chance to transcend the often Regarding affective practice, users became fully immersed restrictive framing of the conflict presented by mainstream in an imaginative role-play that required the use of theatrical media outlets (see Figure 3b). practices, such as customs, location, the use of artifacts, and By co-opting Afifi’s challenge and fostering its algorith- exaggerated body and facial gestures to evoke intense emo- mic zenith, users carved pathways for activism to weave in tions. For example, users wore red hijabs and similarly col- and out of TikTok while amplifying marginalized voices and ored dresses, and attempted to recreate the subtle nuances of increasing their visibility for mass crowds. The memeifica- her facial expressions, to constitute an authentic (self-)perfor- tion process of Afifi’s smile became a political invitation for mance while trying to merge themselves with the memefied users to learn about and observe the brutality enacted against character of Afifi (see Figure 3f). This playful performance Palestinians and to acknowledge other victims of institu- embodies a dialogic infrastructure with the character of the tional violence, such as Black people in the United States. victim because it holds the potential to provide an empathetic Commemorating George Floyd’s tragic death by a White US view of the suffering of others, even without being the pri- police officer, some users opened their videos reenacting the mary source of information about the conflict. iconic facedown position while a knee belonging to an The re-enactments, by fostering feelings of compassion unseen and threatening adversary is being pressed against toward the human costs of the conflict, can be seen as 10 Social Media + Society affective practices because they result in waves of not only confines of the platform, particularly during times of conflict co-constructed grief but also co-constructed empathy (Divon, 2022). (Eriksson Krutrök, 2021). Users emit their emotional desire Playful activism is fostered by the nature of competition by identifying with Afifi through texts, emojis, hashtags, and and performance inhabited in TikTok’s challenges. As users other pictorial icons that act as “symbols of solidarity” strive for their visibility on the “For You” page, they utilize (Döveling et al., 2018, p. 5; see Figure 3g). Hence the arousal the challenges’ memetic qualities that “set the tone for con- of empathy is derived from the ability of the POV challenge versations and bring into words people’s affective senti- to serve as a multimodal “witnessing text,” positioning the ments” in exchange for greater algorithmic exposure and users and the viewers to “bear witness to others’ lives” on engagement (MacDonald, 2021, p. 7). If previous forms of and through TikTok (Frosh, 2006, p. 274). video activism allowed Palestinians to create “bonds of sen- The POV challenge is an open-ended activity that involves timent” (Papacharissi, 2016, p. 308) by showing online the imagination and creativity and leaves room for questioning daily cruelty of the conflict, then TikTok’s unique combina- the rigidity of the real world (Huizinga, 1949/1970). Users tion of affordances has helped users to propel affective con- are encouraged to position themselves as Afifi while cre- tent into visibility through playful practices of activism. atively renegotiating and imaginatively re-enacting her expe- TikTok is playful and affective by design. Its performative riences. In their recollections, users are liberated to play with (e.g., aesthetics, attitudes, body and facial expressions) and their “civic imagination” (Jenkins et al., 2016), finding alter- platformative (e.g., audiovisual features, loops, mimesis) natives to their socio-political hardships like the act of smil- layers of content creation are effective binding techniques ing instead of being overcome by fear, the possibility to crop for expressing, sharing, and disseminating intensity of emo- out the authority figure from their memes, and even setting tions through “purposeful play” (Hartley, 2010). Therefore, Afifi free. granting that affective processes suffuse online social engagement (Papacharissi, 2015), playful activism can trig- ger emotional responses, elicit feelings of community, and Discussion mobilize affective publics for playful participation. Our exploration of the #gazaunderattack on TikTok aligns Since our study’s goal was to explore production practices with previous studies and confirms that although the plat- themselves, this article was unable to go into an in-depth form might seem like a “messy and unorganized” environ- examination of how users perceive these practices. When ment (Vijay & Gekker, 2021), its affordances make it suited multimodal content becomes viral and ignites a memetic for playful activism. We have shown how the emergence of reaction, it is no longer necessarily affiliated with its original TikTok in the mediatization of the Israeli–Palestinian con- users or their values. Thus, it can potentially remove the con- flict is changing common practices of video activism by text of the actions from a social-media-driven movement encouraging playful participation and potentially transform- (Yoon, 2016). Accordingly, and acknowledging that TikTok’s ing users into political performers. TikTok’s entertainment imitation dynamic inherently mixes production and recep- attitude (Kaye et al., 2021) is interwoven in users’ creations, tion (Cervi, 2021), further research should investigate the as they tackle “hard” topics while appropriating the plat- reception aspects (e.g., comments, reactions) of playful form’s vernaculars of playfulness that make activism relat- activism’s ability to mobilize collective action and its effec- able, tangible, and accessible to broader audiences. tiveness in the pursuit of socio-political goals. Playful activism is contextualized in the culture of TikTok’s #challenges. Users co-opt challenges as open- Authors’ Note access, self-learned templates of creation that enable them Both authors contributed equally to the conceptualization, writing, not only to join trending conversations but also to creatively and editing of this article. express and “disseminate political arguments and ideolo- gies” (Hakoköngäs et al., 2020, p. 2). TikTok’s challenges Declaration of Conflicting Interests help normalize the idea that political engagement can be an The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect everyday activity or even a play (Zhao & Abidin, 2021), to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. allowing ordinary users novel forms of dialogue around emerging current events by harnessing memetic templates as their political instruments. Both the potential for virality and Funding the sense of playfulness brought about by the amateur envi- The author received no financial support for the research, author- ronment of challenges (Cervi & Marín Lladó, 2021) lower ship, and/or publication of this article. the barriers to entry into activism and expand the repertoire of what it means to be politically involved. 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Not anymore. VOX. https://www.vox. com/22436208/palestinians-gaza-israel-tiktok-social-media Author Biographies Warfield, K. (2018). Im(matter)ial bodies: A material and affective Laura Cervi, PhD in Political Science from the University of Pavia rethinking of selfies for digital literacy resources. Language (Italy) and the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain), is cur- and Literacy, 20(3), 73–88. rently Serra Hunter Associate Professor at the Department of Wolfsfeld, G. (1997). Constructing news about peace—The role Journalism and Communication Sciences of the Autonomous of the Israeli media in the Oslo peace process. The Tami University of Barcelona (UAB), Spain. Her main research interests Steinmetz Center for Peace Research. are political communication, activism, and social networks, with a Yoon, I. (2016). Why is it not just a joke? Analysis of Internet focus on TikTok. memes associated with racism and hidden ideology of col- orblindness. Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education, Tom Divon, PhD researcher at the Department of Journalism and 33(1), 92–123. Communication at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel. Zeng, J., & Abidin, C. (2021). ‘# OkBoomer, time to meet the Divon’s research focuses on digital culture, the use of platform Zoomers’: Studying the memefication of intergenerational affordances, and user-generated content. Divon examines TikTok’s politics on TikTok. Information, Communication & Society, social-political cultures, and their potential for education in three 24(16), 2459–2481. key areas: TikTokers’ engagements with Holocaust Commemoration Zeng, J., & Kaye, D. B. V. (2022). From content moderation to and Education, TikTokers’ Performative Combat in Antisemitism visibility moderation: A case study of platform governance on and Hate Speech, and TikTokers’ Memetic Participation in TikTok. Policy & Internet, 14(1), 79–95. Nationalism-driven conflicts.