Situated Talk: a method for a reflexive encounter with #donorconceived on TikTok

Giselle Newton, Clare Southerton

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleResearchpeer-review

4 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

There is a pressing need to facilitate sensitive conversations between people with differing or opposing views. On video-sharing app TikTok, the diverse experiences of donor-conceived people and recipient parents sit uneasily alongside each other, coalescing in hashtags like #donorconceived. This article describes a method ‘Situated Talk’ which uses TikToks to facilitate a reflexive encounter, drawing on three areas of scholarship: media ethnography and elicitation, researcher reflexivity and duoethnography/collaborative autoethnography. We describe how we, as a donor-conceived adult (Giselle) and a queer woman who would need donor sperm to have a child (Clare), employed TikToks from #donorconceived as prompts to facilitate a sensitive conversation and elicit situated insights. We explore three central insights from applying our method: (1) discomfort as a productive tension; (2) unresolved dilemmas; and (3) discovering parallels in experience. Using TikToks as stimuli, ‘Situated Talk’ contributes an innovative method for generating grounded social media insights.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)66-80
Number of pages15
JournalMedia International Australia
Volume186
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 2023
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • digital ethnography
  • donor conception
  • LGBTQ +
  • qualitative methods
  • TikTok

Cite this