Cabbuag, S. I., & Abidin, C. (2025). TikTok ‘dogshows’ and the amplification of online incivility among Gen Z influencers in the Philippines. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research, 13678779241302826. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2024i0.13913
Summary
This paper investigates “dogshows,” a culturally specific TikTok phenomenon in the Philippines in which Gen Z influencers and their audiences collaboratively perform, accept, and negotiate online incivility through humor. Cabbuag and Abidin argue that dogshows operate as a vehicle for “legal-but-harmful” content that sits uncomfortably close to cyberbullying and hate speech, while being normalized as entertainment. The paper foregrounds how TikTok’s affordances actively amplify these humor-based cultures of incivility among Filipino youth, offering a non-Western lens on influencer-driven harm.
Key Contributions
- Introduces and theorizes “dogshows” as a localized Filipino form of online incivility on TikTok.
- Extends Matamoros-Fernández et al.’s (2023) concept of legal-but-harmful humor into the context of Gen Z influencer cultures in the Global South.
- Connects platform affordances, humor, and cyberbullying/hate-speech-adjacent practices in a single empirical case.
- Centers Filipino youth digital culture in a literature dominated by Western platform studies.
Methods
- Qualitative case-based analysis of the “dogshow” phenomenon on TikTok in the Philippines.
- Examination of influencer practices alongside audience interactions and participation.
- Reading of TikTok’s platform affordances as co-constitutive of incivility cultures.
Findings
- Dogshows exemplify how incivility becomes a routinized, accepted social practice rather than a marginal transgression.
- Influencers and audiences jointly maneuver legal-but-harmful humor, distributing responsibility for harm across the participatory chain.
- TikTok’s affordances (e.g., remix, virality mechanics, comment cultures) materially amplify humor-based incivility, blurring entertainment with harm.
Connections
This paper sits within a growing strand of TikTok scholarship attentive to how the platform’s affordances shape publics and political/cultural expression; it can be read alongside Gerbaudo2026-fo, Karo2026-dn, and Hollingshead2026-vx as part of a wider conversation about how TikTok’s algorithmic and participatory architecture conditions emergent communicative norms. Its distinctive contribution is to push that conversation toward humor, harm, and non-Western influencer cultures, areas comparatively underexplored in the surrounding literature.
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