| dc.description.abstract | Forming the Spectacle of Body: Analysis of the User-Platform Relationship through Body Performance Videos on TikTok is a study of the user-generated-content on the short-video platform TikTok, and mainly focuses upon the proliferation of the body performance video, namely dancing, lip-sync and its kind. These images undergo the platform’s formulaic mass production, viral circulation, and are incorporated by the entertainment industry and commercial entities, thus forming a “spectacle”. The relationship between users and the platform assumes particular significance and revelatory nature in the formation process of this spectacle. This thesis seeks to analyse and provide theoretical explanations for the new changes and emerging challenges of the human-screen relationship brought about by TikTok, an inherently music-oriented video platform dominated by algorithms. The discourse of the article primarily revolves around two questions: How do users choose to present themselves on TikTok, and how does TikTok as a platform, in turn, affect user behaviour and thus contribute to the formation of the spectacle of body. This thesis adopts a parallel methodology that combines the “walkthrough method” for app study and textual analysis to examine three aspects of body performance videos on TikTok: the external features such as vertical screen format, background space, and music; the pervasive phenomenon of “facial modification”; and the representation and performance of body in the trend of gender ambiguity. They correspond to three stages in the formation of the spectacle, namely the activation and preparation of the user’s body; the gaze and discipline imposed by the platform on the user and the “pseudo-empowerment” that habitualises the user to the docile state; and resultantly, the mass production of body images. With the intervention of the algorithm, by producing an “algorithmic self”, the platform provides the user with an object of narcissism, thus making the relationship between the user and the platform more intertwined and inseparable. | eng |