Curating hope in chronocracy

TikTok creation and the offline lives of young men from Pakistan in Greece

Bibliographic Data

ID6443502
AuthorsRachael Lindsay (0000-0002-6529-2775, University of Cambridge, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume27
Issue7
Pages4127-4142
Publication date2024-03-07
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew Media & Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1461-4448 • E-ISSN: 1461-7315
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/14614448241235188
OpenAlexW4392551803
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited45

This article investigates the disparity between the everyday lives of young men from Pakistan living in Greece and the impressions created through their TikTok profiles. It asks how creating and curating TikTok content counters the multifarious temporal exclusions, or chronocracy, they experience as they work undocumented and attempt to stay under the radar of the authorities. By shedding light on these young men’s own explanations for their TikTok videos, I ultimately argue that TikTok offers a way for these young men to curate a hope that reflects the futures their families in Pakistan desired for their children, while also connecting them with other young men in similar situations. The article draws attention to how multifarious tensions and pressures can both be eased and played out in curating content online and suggests ethnography as a tool and temporality as an analytic in untangling these ambiguities

Internet privacy · Media studies · Online and offline · Political science · Sociology · World Wide Web · Computer Science · ICT in Developing Communities · Law · Media, Religion, Digital Communication · South Asian Cinema and Culture