TikTok post IDs used in Social Media + Society paper: 'Identity Roles and Sociality on TikTok: Performance in Hereditary Cancer Content'

This research examined how identity in the context of hereditary cancer syndromes (BRCA and Lynch Syndrome) is performed on the social media platform: TikTok.

Data was collected using a computational tool developed by The Bright Data Initiative. We collected public posts on TikTok for 15 days across the months of March and April 2023. The posts were retrieved using hashtag based queries (#BRCA and #lynchsyndrome) and were limited to those in the English language. The posts collected reflected what was shown on the respective hashtag page at the time of data collection. Posts displayed on TikTok’s hashtag pages are ordered algorithmically (rather than chronologically). In this way, the data we collected represented content that was deemed ‘top’ by TikTok’s algorithms at the time of collection. The sample of TikTok posts used in this research was taken from a collection conducted on the 2nd March 2023.

We conducted a Qualitative Content Analysis on 100 TikTok videos from our sample (50 BRCA posts and 50 Lynch Syndrome posts).

We have deposited to ORDA the post IDs of the TikTok videos used as examples in our Social Media + Society paper titled: Identity roles and sociality on TikTok: Performance in Hereditary Cancer Content (#BRCA and #Lynchsyndrome)

Due to the sensitive nature of the topics explored in the posts (health, illness, cancer) access to these IDs is restricted but can be requested directly from the authors (contact: hannah.ditchfield@sheffield.ac.uk or s.vicari@sheffield.ac.uk).

This data was collected and analysed as part of the Previvorship in the Platform Society project funded by the Leverhulme Trust, PI Dr Stefania Vicari. This research received ethical approval from the University of Sheffield (Application 044795).