|Talks|

Extracting Values from Youth-Targeted TikTok: A Large Language Model Comparison

Visiting speaker
Hybrid
Past Talk
Alina Strovolsky-Shitrit
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Tel-Aviv University and Visiting Researcher, Network Science Institute, Northeastern University
Tue, Mar 18, 2025
6:00 PM UTC
Tue, Mar 18, 2025
6:00 PM UTC
In-person
4 Thomas More St
London E1W 1YW, UK
The Roux Institute
Room
100 Fore Street
Portland, ME 04101
Network Science Institute
2nd floor
Network Science Institute
11th floor
177 Huntington Ave
Boston, MA 02115
Room
58 St Katharine's Way
London E1W 1LP, UK

Talk recording

Social media platforms, particularly TikTok, have become dominant channels of value transmission to younger generations, superseding traditional agents like parents, educators, and peers. This research develops computational methods to extract implicit values from TikTok content using state-of-the-art language models. We curated and annotated a dataset of hundreds of TikTok videos according to the Schwartz Theory of Personal Values, providing ground truth for model development and evaluation. Our methodological contribution focuses on comparing two computational pipelines: direct value extraction from video content using Large Language Models (LLMs), and a two-step approach that first converts videos to detailed scripts before applying value detection.Our experimental results demonstrate that the two-step approach achieves superior performance, with a fine-tuned Masked Language Model significantly outperforming few-shot applications of various LLMs in value detection tasks. We provide detailed analysis of model performance across different value categories and examine how fine-tuning impacts the models' ability to identify both present and contradicted values in TikTok content.Our findings not only demonstrate the feasibility of automated value detection in social media content but also open new avenues for large-scale TikTok datasets for understanding the role of digital platforms in shaping cultural values and social learning in the digital age.

About the speaker
Dr. Alina Shitrit is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Tel-Aviv University and Visiting Scholar at the Network Science Institute, Northeastern University. With a background in Computer Science and a PhD from the Faculty of Medicine at Tel Aviv University, she spent over two decades applying big data analysis in Biotech. Her current research combines computational methods with social science, developing methodologies to analyze value transmission patterns in social media. At NetSI, she extends this work to investigate large-scale networks of value communication among TikTok influencers and their audiences.
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Mar 18, 2025