Navigating credibility on TikTok

Abstract #

TikTok has become an important information source for young adults, yet little is known about how they assess the credibility of content encountered on the platform. This study builds on a combination of a 7-day diary study with semistructured qualitative interviews with 46 young adults (aged 18–24), providing nuanced insights into credibility assessments during everyday platform use. The findings reveal that participants are generally skeptical of TikTok’s overall credibility, but rely heavily on source authority as a heuristic for judging individual posts. Message characteristics play largely supportive roles, as TikTok’s affordances—particularly its entertainment orientation and aesthetics—make many cues ambiguous. Participants predominantly employ internal verification strategies, drawing on their own knowledge and intuition, and use external strategies only occasionally, mainly by checking on-platform comment sections. Our findings challenge the applicability of traditional credibility models and demonstrate the importance of considering platform affordances when studying credibility assessments.

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