#TomaDeLima on TikTok: Recontextualizing the protest amid Peru's polarized socio-political crisis

Abstract

The emergence of social media platforms has fundamentally changed the creation and dissemination of political discourse. The rapid adoption of TikTok has had a particularly notable impact in Peru, where an increasing number of users are turning to this platform to access news and share political content, often echoing the socio- political crisis prevalent in the country. This thesis examines how affective polarization is reflected in TikTok videos within the hashtag #TomaDeLima, focusing on a corpus of videos capturing opinions and scenes from the protests in the Peruvian capital. Using multimodal discourse analysis and David Machin's recontextualization strategies, this study explores how TikTok users make sense of the demonstrations through the use of strategies such as addition, substitution, evaluation, and deletion.

The findings highlight the significant influence of TikTok's unique features in shaping the way discourses are constructed and shared. Multimodal elements, often intertwined with playful performances and satirical tones, contribute to an atmosphere in which affective polarization is both reflected and reinforced. The study also reveals underlying ideological patterns, including an "Us" versus "Them" narrative and a strong Andean identity among those supporting the protests. Through these methods, TikTok users create discourses that can be potentially manipulative and shape public opinion. This thesis highlights the importance of understanding the role of social media in political discourse, especially in contexts where research on such phenomena is limited, as in the case of Peru and other countries in the Global South.