The Influence of Brands and Platform Mechanics on Creator’ Content Sovereignty on TikTok

TikTok, the fastest growing app of 2020, has received much attention for its growth, creativity and marketing opportunities. Much accelerated through COVID19, TikTok has grown to over 800 million monthly active users and has catapulted itself in frontline media. However, the app has also shown to tightly control its infrastructure through its algorithm centric built, its approach to content censorship and active brand management. With that, TikTok has gone different routes than many predating platforms. Through TikTok’s creator marketplace and indirectly monetizing content creators through its creator fund, TikTok has also shown to hold a tight grip on content creator. For this reason, this study examines the impact of TikTok and brands on content creator’ content sovereignty. Through structured interviews, this study found evidence to suggest that TikTok’s influence on the content behavior of its creator exceeds that of brands. It continues to propose a conceptual model to validate the findings through an empirical research track.