The Prevalence of Pseudoarchaeology on TikTok

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The popularity of pseudoarchaeological content on the internet reveals an issue in the way academics approach the public. To measure how quickly an individual with an interest in archeology can be influenced by pseudoarchaeology, I conducted a preliminary study on the app TikTok. The content that is presented to the users of the app is determined by a complex algorithm which uses this information to curate ones “For You Page”. Several new accounts were created and to train the algorithm I “liked” the first 100 videos in the archaeology “hashtag”. Most of the content in this phase was well researched but there was some pseudoarchaeological content. After, I recorded and liked the first 100 archaeology related videos on the app’s For You Page. The first few videos were well researched but there was a rather immediate switch to pseudoarchaological content. This content included topics like ancient aliens, inaccurate biblical archaeology, and giants. The data collected clearly shows the ease with which a member of the public can be persuaded by pseudoarchaeological content on apps like TikTok. For this reason, more archaeologists need to be engaging with the public in more accessible forums such as social media.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39499.0