DIGITAL INTIMACY AND PUBLIC DISCOURSE: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF AUDIENCE INTERACTION ON PAKISTANI TIKTOK

Abstract

This paper discusses the construction of digital intimacy and public discourse on Pakistani Tik Tok using non-verbal communication and interactivity with the audience. Using the three-dimensional approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) by Norman Fairclough, the study evaluated purposively sampled TikTok videos in the productions of influential Pakistani creators of various genres, such as family vlogging, entertainment, religious guidance, traveling, and sports achievement. It is analyzed in terms of visual and performative components including gestures, facial expressions, clothing, spatial contexts, and body-based interaction as well as the reactions of the audience in the form of likes, comments, and affective interaction.

The results indicate that TikTok serves as a strong platform of a public sphere, which promotes individual experiences into a collective speech and publicly confirmed by the involvement of the audience. Domestic intimacy is built through family-focused narratives that visually predetermine marriage, parenthood, and religious activity, and the reaction of the audience to the created narrative makes heteronormativity of the family and its moral standards natural. The content that is created by female influencers emphasizes the gendered visual norms in which admiration and engagements are the joint elements of the interaction with the audience. The change of moral authority and patriarchal hierarchies through authoritative non-verbal communication and the approval of the audience is reduplicated in religious discourse. Travel and lifestyle content foster aspirational mobility, and videos related to sports arouse group national pride by engaging the emotional aspects of the audience.

Considering CDA, the paper reveals that ideology on TikTok is not rooted in language but through visual performance and emotional exchange. The process of the audience engagement is a type of discursive process which supports the strong cultural norms concerning the family, gender, religion, and nationalism. This study helps to analyze the negotiation of power, culture, and identity by connecting CDA to the multimodal social media context by providing an example of the transforming environment of the Pakistani digital public.