{"title":"视频义务警员:在TikTok上为报复犯罪者而进行的数字战斗","authors":"Sarah Witmer","doi":"10.1177/20563051251382473","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This study examines digital vigilantism videos on TikTok and their role in highlighting systemic barriers to traditional justice. Through textual analysis of 50 TikTok “vigilante videos” and the 244,600 comments supporting them, this research explores how women employ weaponized exposure to pursue informal justice across a spectrum of experienced harms. While prevailing scholarship highlights the risks of digital vigilantism, this project provides a critical feminist perspective, emphasizing the tension between carceral and anticarceral approaches to justice. Findings reveal “vigilante videos” serve three key functions: (1) facilitating retributive action against perpetrators, (2) transforming victims’ shame into collective empowerment, and (3) creating protective networks safeguarding potential future victims. By engaging with these videos, TikTok users foster a sense of crowd-sourced justice, amplifying the voices of women who have been failed by traditional legal avenues. These digital practices reflect a broader critique of the carceral state and demonstrate how women navigate justice outside of formal systems. This research contributes to scholarship on TikTok, cultural criminology activism, and anitcarceral feminism.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.9000,"publicationDate":"2025-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"Video Vigilantes: The Digital Fight for Vengeance Against Perpetrators on TikTok\",\"authors\":\"Sarah Witmer\",\"doi\":\"10.1177/20563051251382473\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"This study examines digital vigilantism videos on TikTok and their role in highlighting systemic barriers to traditional justice. Through textual analysis of 50 TikTok “vigilante videos” and the 244,600 comments supporting them, this research explores how women employ weaponized exposure to pursue informal justice across a spectrum of experienced harms. While prevailing scholarship highlights the risks of digital vigilantism, this project provides a critical feminist perspective, emphasizing the tension between carceral and anticarceral approaches to justice. Findings reveal “vigilante videos” serve three key functions: (1) facilitating retributive action against perpetrators, (2) transforming victims’ shame into collective empowerment, and (3) creating protective networks safeguarding potential future victims. By engaging with these videos, TikTok users foster a sense of crowd-sourced justice, amplifying the voices of women who have been failed by traditional legal avenues. These digital practices reflect a broader critique of the carceral state and demonstrate how women navigate justice outside of formal systems. This research contributes to scholarship on TikTok, cultural criminology activism, and anitcarceral feminism.\",\"PeriodicalId\":47920,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Social Media + Society\",\"volume\":\"2 1\",\"pages\":\"\"},\"PeriodicalIF\":4.9000,\"publicationDate\":\"2025-09-28\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"0\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Social Media + Society\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"98\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251382473\",\"RegionNum\":1,\"RegionCategory\":\"文学\",\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"Q1\",\"JCRName\":\"COMMUNICATION\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Social Media + Society","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251382473","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
Video Vigilantes: The Digital Fight for Vengeance Against Perpetrators on TikTok
This study examines digital vigilantism videos on TikTok and their role in highlighting systemic barriers to traditional justice. Through textual analysis of 50 TikTok “vigilante videos” and the 244,600 comments supporting them, this research explores how women employ weaponized exposure to pursue informal justice across a spectrum of experienced harms. While prevailing scholarship highlights the risks of digital vigilantism, this project provides a critical feminist perspective, emphasizing the tension between carceral and anticarceral approaches to justice. Findings reveal “vigilante videos” serve three key functions: (1) facilitating retributive action against perpetrators, (2) transforming victims’ shame into collective empowerment, and (3) creating protective networks safeguarding potential future victims. By engaging with these videos, TikTok users foster a sense of crowd-sourced justice, amplifying the voices of women who have been failed by traditional legal avenues. These digital practices reflect a broader critique of the carceral state and demonstrate how women navigate justice outside of formal systems. This research contributes to scholarship on TikTok, cultural criminology activism, and anitcarceral feminism.
期刊介绍:
Social Media + Society is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that focuses on the socio-cultural, political, psychological, historical, economic, legal and policy dimensions of social media in societies past, contemporary and future. We publish interdisciplinary work that draws from the social sciences, humanities and computational social sciences, reaches out to the arts and natural sciences, and we endorse mixed methods and methodologies. The journal is open to a diversity of theoretic paradigms and methodologies. The editorial vision of Social Media + Society draws inspiration from research on social media to outline a field of study poised to reflexively grow as social technologies evolve. We foster the open access of sharing of research on the social properties of media, as they manifest themselves through the uses people make of networked platforms past and present, digital and non. The journal presents a collaborative, open, and shared space, dedicated exclusively to the study of social media and their implications for societies. It facilitates state-of-the-art research on cutting-edge trends and allows scholars to focus and track trends specific to this field of study.