A Multimodal Approach to Understanding News Values on TikTok

Much existing research about journalism and TikTok focuses on coverage of particular topics, on the skills and approaches that journalists on TikTok exhibit, and on the dynamics of the platforms that host the produced content. While some research pays attention to a particular mode, for example, the visual aspects of TikTok, few studies try to investigate more holistically the multimodal components that comprise news posts on the platform. Recognizing this, the present chapter explores the ways journalists and news organizations use the audio channel, on-screen text, and the visual channel during the pivotal first few seconds of a sample of TikTok news videos. Through this exploration, the chapter introduces a framework for the multimodal analysis of news values in journalist-produced videos on TikTok and allows for a better understanding of how researchers can better account for and understand the multimodal aspects of journalism produced for the platform.