News on TikTok Through the Lens of Quality Journalism: How TikTok Users Perceive News Values, Content, and Engagement

As TikTok becomes an increasingly popular platform for news consumption, it is important to understand how its unique format aligns with or challenges traditional journalistic standards. This study draws on the quality journalism framework, which consists of professional norms, content features, and audience engagement dimensions, to examine how U.S. TikTok users perceive the quality of news they encounter on the platform. Based on in-depth interviews with 23 TikTok news users, we find that while entertainment is a main motivation for using TikTok, users still value traditional journalistic principles such as information utility, accuracy, and credibility. Users express different expectations for news quality depending on the news topic and the source, whether the content comes from influencers or legacy media. Many users view TikTok news as an entry point to learning about current events and often seek out additional information on other platforms. Our findings suggest that users expect TikTok journalism to maintain a balance between engaging presentation and journalistic rigor. This study contributes to the growing literature on TikTok journalism by focusing on audience perspectives and offering a nuanced look at how news quality is understood within the TikTok context.