Who does the TikTok generation trust? : A study about how swedish TikTok users perceives trustworthiness for content creators versus journalists

This study researches how young adults in Sweden perceive informative TikTok videos from influencers and journalists. This study's purpose was to research if there is a difference in perceived trustworthiness between journalists and influencers. We wanted to research this because of the growth of TikTok and content creators that share information. Blurred lines between journalists and other communicators, such as influencers, keep getting blurrier. The blurred lines and digitalism is something that keeps expanding. The study contributes to research about perceived trustworthiness for different communicators published news or information on social media. The study is based on 26 respondents' answers in an online survey. Respondents in this study were between ages 18-25 and were users of TikTok. The survey contained six TikToks with questions following each TikTok. Half of the TikToks were published by journalists and the other half from influencers. Results in this study were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. This because of the survey's structure, respondents could answer both with multichoice questions and by writing freely. The results show that TikTok videos from journalists are perceived as somewhat more trustworthy than videos from influencers. The difference between videos from journalists and influencers was however not that big. Expertise was the most common reason for the respondent's perseveration of trustworthiness. Expertise was also shown more for journalists videos than influencers. The theme that was identified most often was source criticism, which was identified four times for both the influencers videos and the journalist videos. Our conclusion is that the blurred lines between journalists and influencers together with an experienced expertise are two important factors to understand why different creators are perceived differently. Especially when it comes to TikTok videos where the information has a lower credibility.