Scrolling Through Chaos: The Implications of TikTok for Crisis Sensemaking

This study explores the role of TikTok as a platform-based crisis information source, focusing on how users engaged in collective sensemaking during the 2020 Port of Beirut explosion. Using a mixed-methods approach, the research analyzes multimodal content, including video, comments, hashtags, and transcripts, to understand how users’ holistic information experience influenced sensemaking around the crisis event. Drawing on Dervin’s conceptualization of sensemaking, the study investigates how visual, auditory, and textual elements of TikTok videos facilitate dynamic, iterative information behaviors such as information seeking, sharing, and negotiation. The findings stress how the platform’s recommendation system influences crisis sensemaking and the implications specifically for Middle Eastern crises. Our analysis revealed intersemiotic dissonance—the tension arising from clashing semiotic meanings—highlighting the risk of presenting crisis discourse multimodally.