Same Platform, Different Stories: TikTok and the Battle Over Immigration Narratives

William Hollingshead, Anatoliy Gruzd and Philip Mai
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William Hollingshead: Ted Rogers School of Management, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada
Anatoliy Gruzd: Ted Rogers School of Management, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada
Philip Mai: Ted Rogers School of Management, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada

Media and Communication, 2026, vol. 14

Abstract: In an era defined by overlapping global crises, immigration has become a key fault line in what scholars term a “polycrisis.” Within this context, social media platforms serve as digital battlegrounds for competing narratives about immigration, with TikTok occupying a distinct and understudied niche. This article examines how immigration-related content in Canada is framed on TikTok and how the platform’s logic of mimesis and interactivity, grounded in its affordances, shape immigration discourse. From a dataset of 5,305 public TikTok videos containing immigration-related terms and hashtags, we selected a sample of 344 English-language videos posted in 2025, each with over 100,000 plays and likely shown to Canadian users. Through a mixed-methods content analysis, we found that, contrary to expectations, the content leaned toward positive portrayals of immigration, accounting for 41% of the sample. Furthermore, despite expressing differing perspectives on immigration, users used TikTok’s affordances in comparable ways. That is, the same affordances that can support immigrants’ information seeking and sense of belonging through practical guidance and relatable storytelling, respectively, can be weaponized to amplify xenophobia by way of manipulated statistics and racist humour performed in skits and AI-generated videos. This highlights how TikTok’s affordances can simultaneously support digital inclusion and community building while also enabling exclusion and hostility. The findings, although rooted in Canada, hold broader relevance for understanding how short-video platforms mediate contentious issues across digitally connected societies.

Keywords: affordances; digital social resilience; framing; immigration; Polycrisis; TikTok (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cog:meanco:v14:y:2026:a:11409

DOI: 10.17645/mac.11409

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