Paper short abstract

On TikTok, young people with metastatic breast cancer chronicle their experiences of living with their disease. How do these modes of representation draw from established influencer practices, and how do they distinguish themselves as health creators?

Paper long abstract

On TikTok, young people with metastatic breast cancer (MBC) chronicle their experiences of living with their disease in videos that explain what is currently happening with their treatment. Created on a relatively regular basis, “health update” videos keep their followers informed on a range of health-related phenomena, such as their experiences of chemotherapy side effects, their latest scan results, changes to their treatment plans, or accounts of their general mood and energy levels. Emotion and information are key parts of these updates – creators will often get emotional while filming, and other times, position themselves as educators, who take time to answer commenters’ questions and provide additional information about MBC where possible, drawing from their own expertise. They provide a “display of the hidden inner life” (Marwick 2013). TikTok’s conventions and norms – which favor casually produced materials and allow for serious discussions of heavy topics – have created conditions in which advocacy work can circulate with ease and where substantial dialogue via comment sections and response videos are commonplace.

I examine MBC health updates posted by young people on TikTok, and ask, what patterns and trends characterize MBC update videos? What forms of media accounting (Humphreys 2018) do their creators use to disclose their diagnosis and explain its meaning? How might we understand the work of chronicling MBC as part of a feminist documentational praxis? In what ways do these modes of representation draw from established influencer practices, and in what ways do they distinguish themselves as health creators?