Introduction
This blog post is a study on the TikTok activities of Muslim Interaktiv, a group often linked to Hizb ut-Tahrir, although this is contested. The primary objective of this research is to gain insights into their effective occupation of digital discourses and their ability to amass spectatorship for their content. By examining their strategies, I aim to identify knowledge on one way virality is fostered on TikTok. Additionally, I argue the urgency for practitioners to adopt similar tactics to engage in these very discourses for social good. To achieve this, I have transcribed, coded, and analyzed of all Muslim Interaktiv videos for the year 2021. The short findings are presented below.
Findings
The findings are concise and can be summarized as follows: Firstly, short videos gain significant views and popularity, possibly due to the TikTok algorithm favoring videos around 30 seconds or shorter. To convey complex issues effectively, Muslim Interaktiv put aside nuance for some videos and focus on striking messages. In the figure below, video length is represented by circle size, and hovering over circles provides access to specific video lengths. Secondly, Muslim Interaktiv strategically posts content related to important events and anniversaries generally referring to situations where Muslims face repression, oppression, Islamophobia, violence, or grievances - like the anniversary of the Hanau attack in 2020 or the murder of Marwa El-Sherbini in 2009. By aligning their posts with the popularity and trendiness of these topics, they effectively engage in discourse with their commentary and ideology, leveraging the actuality of such events. Through these strategies, Muslim Interaktiv effectively occupies narrative spaces with their very own ideology. This becomes particularly significant, given the importance of addressing Muslim grievances for Muslims as a whole. The group’s primary focus revolves around topics directly linked to these grievances, including German and International Politics and related actors (refer to the table below and the final figure).
The Videos and Timeline
Actors Muslim Interaktiv refer to
| term | videos |
|---|---|
| german_politicians | 10 |
| german_media | 9 |
| brenton_tarrant | 6 |
| george_w_bush_jr | 4 |
| horst_seehofer | 4 |
| sebastian_kurz | 3 |
| cdu | 2 |
| emmanuel_macron | 2 |
| gerald_darmanin | 2 |
| israeli_settlers | 2 |
| olivia_jones | 2 |
| serdar_somuncu | 2 |
| stern_tv | 2 |
| afd | 1 |
| amin_laschet | 1 |
| anthony_w_yribe | 1 |
| axel_springer_verlag | 1 |
| barack_obama | 1 |
| bild | 1 |
| bmi | 1 |
| boris_johnson | 1 |
| bryan_l_howard | 1 |
| bundesrat | 1 |
| cem_özdemir | 1 |
| christian_lindner | 1 |
| der_spiegel | 1 |
| donald_trump | 1 |
| fdp | 1 |
| german_police | 1 |
| grüne | 1 |
| james_p_barker | 1 |
| jesse_v_spielman | 1 |
| joe_biden | 1 |
| julia_klöckner | 1 |
| kölner_ex_muslime | 1 |
| linke | 1 |
| markus_söder | 1 |
| nato | 1 |
| netflix | 1 |
| norbert_hofer | 1 |
| patrick_moster | 1 |
| paul_e_cortez | 1 |
| paul_ziemiak | 1 |
| ratko_mladić | 1 |
| spd | 1 |
| steven_dale | 1 |
| thomas_raabe | 1 |
| tobias_r | 1 |
Muslim Grievances in the Topic Setting
