An investigation into transgender identity, ecology, nature, and social media presence, and ultimately seeking liberation for trans and cis people alike through critical application and development of technology.
See Findings →Can a platform often seen as a tool of capitalist exploitation and political decentralisation play a vital role in the quest for trans liberation?
4 controlled TikTok accounts created for this study. First 30 For You Page videos per session logged and analysed ethnographically.
Convergence of transgender identity, environmentalism, and pollution: an understudied intersection in social media research.
In contemporary public discourse, the transgender community has been at the forefront, especially on social media. While much of the conversation revolves around political aspects, the convergence of transgender identity, environmentalism, and pollution on TikTok has received far less attention.
TikTok offers a platform for marginalised voices, but it simultaneously serves as a battleground for competing interests seeking dominance and control. This research examines both sides: what the platform makes possible, and what it suppresses.
The experience of identifying with a gender/non-gender that differs from one assigned at birth, including non-binary and gender diverse individuals. This identity encapsulates various personal and interpersonal identities, expressions, and experiences.
These definitions are contextual to our time (the 2020s) and place (the United States in particular).
The broader concept of the context of which one exists and bears livelihood in, providing conditions and resources necessary for survival, wellbeing, and development. In this project, focused on the natural-physical and biological component that precedes human intervention, yet is interconnected with the anthropocentric systems that reciprocally shape human life.
Rather than studying existing TikTok accounts, we created four new controlled accounts, allowing us to observe how the algorithm constructs identity from scratch, rather than inheriting an existing profile's history.
4 fresh TikTok accounts created with no prior history. Each approached the platform from a different identity perspective to observe divergent algorithmic paths.
Premeditated search terms entered: Transgender Nature, Transgender Identity, Queer Ecology, Black Transgender. Each term tied to a specific account.
First 30 For You Page videos per session logged. Content, creator characteristics, and platform suggestions documented across the full sampling period (April–June 2024).
Engagements, creator characteristics, recurring patterns, and platform behaviour documented ethnographically. Qualitative dataset created from patterns across all four accounts.
The platform's algorithm does not neutrally amplify trans voices. It constructs, fragments, and constrains identity through feedback loops, visibility hierarchies, and structural absences.
TikTok's unique content format and search mechanisms result in feedback loops for users' experience, with conflicting content identity overall. The FYP doesn't reflect who you are; it shapes who the platform decides you are.
Most narration of nature considered "transgender" portrayed it as exclusive, deviant, and disconnected from other related identities. Rather than opening new frames for trans ecology, nature content often reproduced existing essentialist logics.
Lack of content and creators that are trans people of colour was consistent across all four accounts. Class diversity within the in-group was also frequently missing, revealing whose transness the algorithm amplifies.
Disproportionate visibility among sub-groups, with hyper-visibility amongst trans women of colour, often narrated in polarising, devisive rhetoric. High visibility does not equal equitable or liberatory representation.
Adapted from DeVito (2018), the folk theory framework describes how users develop mental models of algorithmic systems, and how those perceived models shape behaviour, self-presentation, and identity construction on the platform.
In this study, both the accounts' behaviour and the content creators' behaviour reflected internalized folk theories, shaping what they posted, how they described themselves, and what they amplified.
Our findings reinforce previous notions about user identity on TikTok but also reveal volatility in the interaction between the transgender community and ecological content on the platform. A platform that makes trans people visible does not automatically make them free, especially when that visibility is filtered through an algorithm that reproduces existing hierarchies of whose identity gets amplified, celebrated, or erased.
Nature content portrayed as "transgender" often positioned trans identity as exclusive and deviant, disconnected from related identities. Intersectional perspectives (race, class, ecology) were structurally absent from algorithmically amplified content.
Trans women of colour received disproportionate visibility, but framed within polarising, divisive rhetoric rather than affirmative representation. Sub-group visibility did not translate to equitable platform treatment.
Content from and about trans people of colour was consistently underrepresented across all four accounts regardless of search term. Class diversity within the trans community was also frequently absent from algorithmically suggested content.