Life sharing or crimes sharing: an investigation on crime learning from China short-form video platforms

ABSTRACT The worldwide proliferation of TikTok revealed the shifting interests of users from text-and-image-based content to short-form videos (SVs). Short-form Video Platforms (SVPs) have been further acknowledged as mainstream life-sharing platforms and novel learning resources for informational and practical needs. Surprisingly, increasing evidence from China’s judicial practices unfolded that, offenders were motivated and learned criminal skills by interacting with and imitating from the SVPs’ uploaders. Previous literature has focused on harmful contents and its negative impact on traditional social media platforms, limited has drawn attention on SVPs nor its shared SVs which may potentially spread criminal intentions or even skills to the audience. To fill these gaps, this article for the first time focused on SVP, intended to investigate the criminal motivations and skills identified in China’s major SVPs, explored the rationales behind crime learning behaviors, and proposed feasible regulatory solutions for the SVPs to facilitate the prevention of crimes.