While everyone would easily say about TikTok‘s rapid growth among Gen-Z users and its impact in the culture industries at large, the platform’s true significance runs far deeper — revolutionising sports industry, its mediatised and spectacularised consumption and production circuits, athlete branding, and cultural narratives in ways that transcend mere viral trends, memes, follower counts, and continuous scrolling.
One such example of the revolution in the sport industry that was sparked by the rapid rise of TikTok and its prominence as one of the main social media platforms for Gen-Z users, is through the trendy and edgy content strategy curated by the International Paralympic Committee. While this type of humorous content has received some criticism in traditional media outlets – such as in this article by the Washington Post – it is undeniable that the humorous content is achieving some important results that speak to the International Paralympic Committee’s mission of ‘creating an inclusive world through Para Sport‘.
In a paper – Challenging (platformisation) invisibilities through humour: The Paralympics, TikTok and social change? – I wrote together with Jan Andre Lee Ludvigsen – from Liverpool John Moores University (UK) – we have used the newly available TikTok Research API to analyse how the content shared by the International Paralympic Committee have achieved important results in terms of shaping Gen-Z sports culture; and they have achieved that through the use of humorous content that is the common language on TikTok.
What we have found is that the humorous content shared on TikTok by the International Paralympic Committee has achieved its main objective of challenging the invisibilities that disability sport – and the Paralympic Games specifically – face when looking at their position in the wider sports media industry. Not only the humorous content has challenged invisibilities and therefore shaped sports culture, it has also managed to put disability at the front and centre of the content to millions around the world – on average the short videos were seen over 600,000 times, with the most viewed one having almost 7,500,000 views. This type of humorous, mundane and self-deprecating content has also helped in demystifying the image of those athletes as super-humans (the supercrip narrative that is commonly found on traditional media).
Nevertheless, while those were positive changes and revolutions in terms of the sport industry and Gen-Z sports culture taking place on TikTok, the humorous element might have – unintentionally – recreated a portrayal that disability sport is not serious (professional) sport.
The question that remains is: How could the International Paralympic Committee leverage humorous content that is commonplace on TikTok without falling into the trap of showing disability sport as non-serious?
Media and Digital Transformation in Sport 
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