Blood donors wanted: narrative innovation on TikTok to enable mobilization

Abstract

The explosive success of TikTok is one of a long list of phenomena that are transforming audiovisual relationships, creation, and consumption (Gómez-García; Vicent-Ibáñez, 2022). At the same time, social networks are demonstrating a capacity for outreach, awareness, and activism through innovative narratives that impact the audience. Therefore, we ask if and how, in addition to entertaining and being a place to find the latest trends, TikTok can help promote health activism linked to blood donation –an act of social responsibility– the collection of which has been in sharp decline for years (Carter et al., 2011; Huis-in ‘t-Veld et al., 2019). Through multimodal discourse analysis (Kress, 2012), we determine the characteristics, significance, and communicative resources of the tiktoks that the platform grouped under the hashtag #donasangre [#DonateBlood], ultimately comparing them with the perception and relationship that a large group of young university students expressed in focus groups. Among the results, we highlight how content on TikTok is reinterpreted and appropriated, as well as the false myths perpetuated among young people that keep them from donating and reinforce the importance of health institutions taking an active role in the online conversation and integrating narrative innovation into their content creation dynamics. Qualitative analysis of comments (6,215) revealed that there is an audience that “comes together” (Juris, 2012) and whose members reaffirm their status as donors and whose experience tempers the idea of donating being stressful and scary.