Amplified selves, elusive collectives: the paradox of digital nomadism on TikTok

Abstract

Introduction:

This study examines the construction of collective identity among digital nomads on TikTok, foregrounding how psychological needs from Maslow’s hierarchy are selectively projected through the platform’s affordances.

Methods:

The study deployed a mixed-method, longitudinal analysis of over 10,000 TikTok posts tagged with #digitalnomad from 2020 to early 2025.

Results:

Findings show that TikTok’s design prioritizes content optimizing for individual, aspirational self-presentation and peer resonance. As a consequence, digital nomad collective identity on the platform centers on entrepreneurialism and lifestyle optimization, increasingly favouring narratives of individual affordability, adaptability, and micro-achievement. TikTok’s algorithmic and memetic infrastructure systematically amplifies digital nomads’ content that addresses personal recognition and community engagement (social needs), shaped to be episodic, marketable, and non-threatening to existing labor structures, sidelining narratives of collective struggle and systemic challenge. This dynamic effectively produces a culture of celebrated resilience and individualized aspiration, creating a visible collective identity without the collective grievances or solidarities that underpin social mobilization. In our corpus, complex issues, such as legal rights or labor precarity, are marginalized by platform logics that favor memetic, digestible content, thereby inhibiting the formation of politically coherent movements.

Conclusion:

Ultimately, this research demonstrates that TikTok’s sociotechnical architecture channels the energies of digital nomads toward visible and episodic social and safety needs fulfillment, yet undermines the conditions for sustained collective mobilization. The platform transforms personal travelogues into aspirational mobility templates, mediating the tension between aspiration and precarity while highlighting a paradox: its capacity to build shared identity simultaneously constrains the potential for collective action.

Introduction

On TikTok, individual stories rarely remain in isolation; they intersect and intertwine, building the foundation for a collective online identity. This study explores this dynamic by applying narrative identity theory, which posits that we construct our sense of self by crafting coherent stories from our life experiences (McAdams, 2018). Adopting an interactional framework, the research moves beyond viewing online identity as merely personal. Instead, it theorizes the shift from individual to collective as a process of narrative convergence, where personal tales merge into the shared cultural schemas that define a community.

Importantly, on TikTok, these narratives are not simply creative expressions but are actively shaped and transformed through culturally mediated, platform-specific storytelling practices. Hereafter, the study examines the online narratives of digital nomads (DNs) on TikTok. DN is a contemporary, socio-technical phenomenon whose emergence, practice, and online collective identity are inexorably linked to human–media interaction. The lifestyle is both an outcome and a performative product of ongoing mediation, making it a fertile ground for HMI research, especially in the qualitative analysis of online identity through computational and interactional factors, social media affordances, and the production of memetic content.

As technologically adept professionals, DNs embrace global mobility, exemplifying the porous boundaries between the personal and professional spheres that characterize the contemporary knowledge economy (Hermann and Paris, 2020). Their experiences encapsulate the broader “mobile turn” (Schlagwein and Jarrahi, 2020), marked by a rejection of office-bound work and an explicit pursuit of self-actualization (Toivanen, 2025; Ehn et al., 2022). The author frames this shift through Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, identifying online narratives as spaces where these needs are actively performed and negotiated, with algorithmic recommendations guiding identity formation at both individual and collective levels. In post-industrial work environments, frustration from unmet higher-order needs can foster collective action (Sağlamöz et al., 2025). Meanwhile, the digital nomad archetype brings into focus the inherent contradictions of global mobility, showing how ideals of freedom are often inseparable from capitalist structures and platform logics. This prompts continual debate about self-actualization and resistance within digital nomadism (Wang et al., 2024; Karizat et al., 2021).

DN thus exists within a fundamental dialectic between the promise of individual liberation and the realities of structural reproduction. On the one hand, it is entwined with transnational privilege and class distinction, as knowledge workers from the Global North often leverage remote work possibilities in the Global South, perpetuating neo-colonial asymmetries (Bahri, 2024; Bozzi, 2020). This situates the DN as an archetype of the neoliberal subject: autonomous, entrepreneurial, and individually responsible for confronting risk and precarity. On the other hand, the shared experiences and emergent challenges faced by DNs create new opportunities for collective meaning-making, solidarity, and potentially a form of collective action that could resist or subvert existing labor structures (Wang et al., 2024).

On TikTok, DNs’ travel narratives aggregate into broader collective stories of freedom, mobility, self-actualisation, and alternative lifestyles. This phenomenon aligns with scholarship on collective storytelling, in which individual narratives become building blocks for community myths and shared systems of meaning. Polletta and Jasper (2001) emphasize that this connection is built and negotiated over time through shared meanings, experiences, and practices within a group. In algorithmically mediated environments such as TikTok, collective identity emerges from “recurrent, cohesive, and coordinated communicative interaction networks” (Barandiaran et al., 2020, p. 1). These processes are intensified by the platform’s small-world network topology (Schnettler, 2009), where strategic use of hashtags and trends forges dense clusters of transient communities (Karizat et al., 2021). Within these clusters, repeated engagement with memetic content both reinforces group norms and strengthens identification.

Additionally, drawing on memetic identity research (Balkin, 1998; Zhang et al., 2025), this study conceives of memes as “boundary objects in identity negotiation” that act as cultural resources for both expressing and contesting group belonging. Memes on TikTok are seen as tools for identity work, emotional expression, and cross-cultural dialogue, serving as enablers of strategic self-positioning within online collectives and as indirect instruments for the satisfaction of performative needs. The platform’s architecture, with its visually driven, algorithmically curated content flows, constructs what Zulli and Zulli (2022) refer to as “imitation publics”: communities defined by practices of mimicry and participation. These publics can facilitate the circulation and normalization of individualized neoliberal ethos, but, crucially, they can also provide the infrastructure for new forms of solidarity and shared understanding (Priante et al., 2018).

Building further on research about social media affordances’ capacity for organizing collective action through the combination of network building and framing processes (Sæbø et al., 2020), this study examines whether TikTok’s affordances, conceptualized as discoverability,¹ relatability,² and accessibility,³ enable DNs to move beyond individual identity performance toward collective movement formation. Through a longitudinal, socio-technical grounded-theory (Hoda, 2024) analysis of video contributions’ metadata, this research asks whether these platform affordances can catalyze a shift from individualized nomadic performances to the emergence of a collective movement, and how such dynamics may shape the dominant narratives and underlying tensions of DN over time.

Related work

Cultural transmission on digital platforms

The cultural transmission theory helps to understand how collective identities are forged in digital ecosystems. The fundamental units of cultural transmission, or “memes” (Dawkins, 1976), propagate through digital networks via reproduction, variation, and selection, functioning as replicators that embed shared meanings into a culture’s collective consciousness (Heylighen and Chielens, 2015). Memes act as cultural software (Balkin, 1998), transmitting know-how through imitation and communication. Shifman (2013) argues that the spread of memes is driven by both imitation and creative adaptation, and highlights that digital memes propagate most effectively when audiences actively modify, remix, and communicate them, resulting in dynamic chains of meaning and continuous evolution. This resonates with memetic theories emphasizing reproduction, variation, and selection, while incorporating the agency and creativity of digital communities. This process is dramatically accelerated by what Watts and Strogatz (1998) coined as the “small-world” network structures. On TikTok, the algorithmic dissemination creates highly clustered communities that allow memes to leap from niche subcultures to a global scale, rapidly solidifying collective interpretations. This dynamic gives rise to platform collectivism, where individuals leverage platform affordances to pursue shared goals (Papadimitropoulos, 2021). Platforms like TikTok facilitate this by encouraging the transformation of complex ideas into digestible, performatively authentic content, which enhances algorithmic reach and user engagement (Ahmad et al., 2025; Li et al., 2025). However, this process is complicated by the commodification of these shared identities, which can impact the integrity of the cultural information being transmitted (Luhukay and Rusadi, 2023).

When viewed through a later, more flexible interpretation of Maslow’s (1991) hierarchy of needs, memes can be understood as identity resources that enable individuals to strategically position themselves within social networks to pursue need-fulfilling opportunities (Karahanna et al., 2018). This process involves the strategic deployment of cultural symbols—memes—to construct recognizable identity positions, facilitating social connection, economic opportunity, and community membership. Maslow’s hierarchy becomes a relevant framework for understanding how distinct identity positions can enable access to different types of social and economic resources, particularly in digital contexts where visibility and affiliation play critical roles (Tay and Diener, 2011). Memes thus function as the cultural currency through which these identity positions are negotiated, performed, and rendered legible to audiences within platform-based social ecologies. Importantly, Maslow’s framework, as adapted by contemporary scholarship, recognizes that needs are dynamically prioritized depending on both cultural and individual circumstances, rather than being met in a rigid sequence (Tay and Diener, 2011). The viral spread of memes on digital platforms, therefore, acts as both a cultural and motivational force, supporting not only the construction of collective meaning but also the strategic satisfaction of needs through group membership and social positioning.

The connection between Maslow’s hierarchy and the emergence of collective action is further corroborated by foundational work, such as Dollard et al.’s (1939) Frustration-Aggression Theory, and supported by Maslow (1943, 1970) himself as well as contemporary researchers (Wood, 2010; da Costa et al., 2023; Sağlamöz et al., 2025), who collectively demonstrate that unmet higher-order needs, beyond physical survival, often catalyze collective organization, protest, and new social movements as individuals band together to seek meaning, status, and autonomy denied to them within current structures.

Platform algorithms, understood as cultural and socio-technical artifacts (Striphas, 2015), structure this dynamic by acting as operationalized versions of cultural logic. Constituted by humans and human cultural codes, social biases, and shared values and trained on vast datasets of past human behavior, these algorithms amplify content that resonates with psychological needs at scale, effectively learning and reproducing dominant cultural patterns. The core metrics, such as ‘watch time’ or ‘likes,’ are designed to optimize for engagement, which in turn reflects and reinforces culturally specific values like social validation and collective attention (Seaver, 2017). In this capacity, the algorithm’s architecture intertwines growth and fulfillment needs with the platform’s logic, shaping how these needs are expressed and which cultural narratives they amplify. This synergy reveals that the algorithm is not a rock in a cultural stream but is part of the stream itself, actively reproducing cultural norms while renegotiating the boundaries between individual and collective belonging within technologically mediated landscapes.

Affordances as a socio-technical infrastructure

Affordances represent the constraints, possibilities, and tools shaped by the interplay between technological properties, user perceptions, and shared cultural practices (Bucher and Helmond, 2018). Functionally, they enable or constrain actions, while relationally, their impact varies across contexts (Hutchby, 2001). Concepts such as vernacular affordances, which focus on non-commercial platform engagement, and imagined affordances, which blend material and emotional human-technology interactions, highlight this duality (McVeigh-Schultz and Baym, 2015; Nagy and Neff, 2015). Social media affordances arise at the intersection of platform politics (algorithms) and user-group cultures (Gillespie, 2010; Rieder et al., 2018).

In the digital space, where physical cues are absent, identity construction relies heavily on textual disclosure through three key elements: video descriptions, hashtags, and overlay text (Huang et al., 2021). Hashtags function as “focal points of common knowledge,” connecting individual content to broader conversations and communities (Barron and Bollen, 2022). These textual elements serve as internal monologues or direct addresses to the viewers, offering insight into the creators’ intentions while reinforcing in-group norms and linguistic styles.

The platform’s affordances for layered communication allow creators to strategically embed meaning on multiple levels: explicit commentary through descriptions, community affiliation and discoverability via hashtags, and ephemeral, affective cues with overlay text. This layering enables nuanced self-presentation and collective framing, as stories become resonant within and across networked groups. Because these textual modes are persistent, remixable, and algorithmically amplified, they offer a robust dataset for analyzing how collective identity forms and how calls to collective action are staged. This staging often relies on the vernacular of ‘gesticular activism’ (Zhao and Abidin, 2023), where embodied performances and hyper-visible trends, anchored by these platform affordances, serve as the primary mode of awareness-building, even in the absence of face-to-face interaction (Khazraee, 2018).

Digital nomadism as a socio-technical phenomenon

DN has emerged as a distinctive form of digital labor mobility that transcends traditional boundaries, often described as a “leisure-driven lifestyle predominantly premised on a ‘work from anywhere’ logic” (Aroles et al., 2023). Despite the growing body of literature on this phenomenon, there is no consensus or precise definition of DN among scholars. Recently, Bozzi (2024, p. 1) defined it as “professionals who live, travel, and work online from multiple destinations with a reliable internet connection”, while Cook (2023, p. 17) specified the autonomy and frequency of location change to at least three times a year. This lifestyle is motivated mainly by a rejection of conventional office structures (Toivanen, 2025) and a pursuit of autonomy, competence, and creativity (Tay and Diener, 2011). Both privileged and precarious forms of digital labor navigate fluid work-leisure boundaries and adapt to new environments through mobility and digital mediation (Thompson, 2019; Xiao and Lutz, 2024; Miguel et al., 2024). The ambiguity and uncertainty central to this lifestyle are viewed not only as challenges but also as catalysts for creativity (Prester et al., 2023).

The liminality of DN generates tensions between mobility and permanence, often negotiated through geo-arbitrage, the practice of optimizing income by living in lower-cost Global South destinations, such as Bali, Thailand, and Mexico (Andino-Frydman, 2023; Habibilla and Fahadayna, 2023; Reichenberger, 2018). While technologically savvy professionals participate in global networks, they frequently bypass conventional structures of local economies (Xiao and Lutz, 2024). Instead, DNs are characterized by their participation in the visitor economy, engagement in digitized work, and the use of shared facilities such as coliving and coworking spaces (Jiwasiddi et al., 2024; Müller, 2016). Economically, they contribute disposable income to local businesses without directly competing for local jobs, but this can also lead to rising housing costs and gentrification (Jiwasiddi et al., 2024; Xiao and Lutz, 2024). In response, nation-states compete to attract DNs through specialized visa policies while grappling with issues of taxation and legal status (Mancinelli and Molz, 2023; Bahri and Widhyharto, 2021; Wang et al., 2024).

Reliant on remote connectivity, creators identifying as DNs use social media platforms to construct distinct online personae and showcase their lifestyles (Miguel et al., 2023). Unlike earlier versions of social networks based on close personal ties, modern platforms like TikTok employ a small-world network logic, enabling the rapid clustering of content from like-minded individuals (Schnettler, 2009), which supports both the diffusion of dominant lifestyle tropes and the emergence of counter-narratives. DN’s non-traditional approach to social connections may also be reflected in their use of weak-ties logic to find partners and manage the “relational work” of sustaining long-distance connections (Miguel et al., 2025). The result is a state of “ambient co-presence” beyond close-knit networks, which incentivizes the curation of highly relatable personas to maintain dispersed social ties (Madianou, 2016). The thrill of adapting to new scenarios is partly driven by escapist behavior and cognitive loneliness, with perceptions of loneliness being more closely related to the subjective quality of interactions than to objective conditions (Miguel et al., 2024; Marangoni and Ickes, 1989).

The online identity of the DN has undergone significant evolution. Before the pandemic, hashtag analysis on Twitter revealed that #digitalnomad was a central theme linking worker identity with travel, flexibility, and technology (Hemsley et al., 2020). During the COVID-19 pandemic, an influx of aspiring nomads on platforms like Reddit disrupted online community norms and reshaped the meaning of DN’s identity (Pita et al., 2022), while prominent creators on YouTube demonstrated resourcefulness by prioritizing self-actualization over security (Ehn et al., 2022). Although once heralded as “the future of work,” the pandemic ultimately democratized remote work and commodified the DN lifestyle (Hemsley et al., 2020; Xiao and Lutz, 2024). Online creators have increasingly monetized this lifestyle by sharing aspirational narratives, which underscores its precarious yet flexible nature (Bonneau et al., 2023; Andino-Frydman, 2023). Consequently, academic critics argue that DN culture embodies a neoliberal construct, with social media promoting an idealized lifestyle driven by an entrepreneurial ethos (Bozzi, 2020; Xiao and Lutz, 2024).

The lifestyle tensions inherent in digital nomadism find a powerful medium in TikTok, whose socio-technical architecture provides the infrastructure for DN’s online identity construction, community formation, and discourse. The affordances of relatability, discoverability, and accessibility directly shape how the DN’s experience is performed and perceived online. For instance, the DNs’ need for “ambient co-presence” and management of “relational work” (Madianou, 2016; Miguel et al., 2025) is facilitated by TikTok’s relatability engine, which connects individuals through shared experiences rather than pre-existing ties. The platform’s discoverability, powered by algorithmic curation and hashtags like #digitalnomad, creates the very “small-world networks” (Schnettler, 2009) that allow for the rapid diffusion of DN’s narratives, whether they be aspirational tropes or critical counter-narratives. Finally, the accessibility of TikTok’s creative tools empowers a wide range of DNs to participate in these conversations, contributing to the ongoing negotiation of what the DN identity means, especially in a post-pandemic world where the lifestyle has been both democratized and commodified. Thus, TikTok does not merely host DN content; its architecture affects the possibilities for how existing and aspiring DNs forge identity, build collectives, and navigate the tensions of their mobile lives.

Materials and methods

This study employed a hybrid qualitative and computational methodology for a longitudinal study of DN online collective identity construction on TikTok and addressed three primary research questions: (1) What core narratives and aspirations constitute the collective identity of DNs on TikTok?; (2) How do TikTok’s affordances shape the communication and evolution of this collective identity?; and (3) To what extent do TikTok’s platform affordances enable or constrain the capacity of DNs community to foster sustained collective action and generate meaningful systemic change in contemporary labour logics?

The approach is grounded in Socio-Technical Grounded Theory (STGT) (Hoda, 2024), which emphasizes an iterative process of data analysis and theoretical development, making it well-suited for exploring emergent phenomena in socio-technical contexts, such as social media platforms. Following these grounded theory protocols for contextual analysis, the study maintains a two-level coding structure where identity elements serve as contextual conditions that mediate the relationship between granular codes and Maslow’s (1991) needs. This approach recognizes that the same behavioral codes (e.g., platform-specific content creation) can serve fundamentally different need expression depending on the identity context in which they occur. The methodology evolved through several stages to address the challenges of using Large Language Models (LLMs) for large-scale deductive qualitative coding (Chew et al., 2023).

Data sampling and acquisition

The data collection process began with an exploratory analysis of TikTok content marked with the hashtag #digitalnomad in early 2022. The study used the snowball sampling technique to identify related hashtags, revealing a broader ecosystem that included #digitalnomadlifestyle, #digitalnomadlife, #remotework, #travellife, and #workfromanywhere.

Using this expanded set of hashtags, an ongoing query was established with TIKAPI, a third-party commercial API, to gather TikTok video posts and their associated metadata. The process of data collection is thoroughly documented in the ReadMe.md file on Ehn (2025) and is replicable, under the condition of the original content’s availability. The final dataset for this study comprises 10,599 unique TikTok videos posted between 2019 and early 2025. For each video, the analysis focused on three key textual fields: the video description (desc)—the considered and articulated stories that individuals tell about themselves and their experiences in the post, user-generated hashtags (hashtagNames)—the explicit links individuals make to established groups and conversations, and text overlaid on the video (stickersText)—the emphasized, often informal, communication that highlights the core message of the content. Additionally, the author gathered the video upload date to the platform, the author’s ID, and the video ID. To ensure privacy, video IDs were anonymized by hashing them using the Python hashlib library, with the unique hashing key securely stored in a author’s cloud storage. When the content author deletes the video contribution, the link becomes obsolete, and by this, the data deletion policy is still in the agency of the TikTok platform.

Focusing on descriptions, user-generated hashtags, and on-screen text intentionally foregrounds how creators narrate, index, and emphasize their experiences, but it brackets the rich semiotics of sound, editing style, gestures, and visual environments that are central to TikTok’s meaning-making. This means that in this study, online collective identity is reconstructed from articulated and highlighted statements, what users say about themselves and choose to emphasize in text, rather than from the full multimodal assemblage through which status, belonging, and aspiration are also performed. Consequently, the analysis cannot robustly address phenomena such as how particular songs, vocal trends, or editing templates function as “memetic infrastructures” for digital nomadism, and treats textual fields as proxies for these broader dynamics rather than as complete representations of them.

The study involving human participants was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of the Lusófona Institute for Research and Development (Ref. ATA number 31/2025). The study exclusively analyzed non-identifiable, public TikTok content, which aligns with European data protection standards and institutional guidelines that exempt such research from requiring individual consent, provided no personal information is collected or re-identified.

Methodological and ethical constraints shaped by TikTok’s evolving Terms of Service precluded the systematic scraping or storage of full audiovisual content. Thus, the study prioritized metadata and minimized retention of potentially sensitive material, which necessarily restricts the granularity with which affect, embodiment, and location cues can be examined. The author confirms that the data collection complied with TikTok’s Terms of Service and Community Guidelines. Only publicly accessible content was retrieved through the TikApi third-party tool, without attempting to circumvent platform restrictions or access private information. Following AoIR’s Internet Research: Ethical Guidelines 3.0 (Shakti Franzke et al., 2020), the author opted not to download TikTok content directly and instead implemented responsible data handling and privacy safeguards by hashing all identifiable data points in the dataset and storing the key separately. By triangulating data solely from the dataset’s elements, such as hashtags, video captions, and video descriptions, the author examines how individuals construct their online identities, how these constructions align to form a collective representation of digital nomads, and how that collective identity is expressed and reinforced through shared needs expressions.

Dataset characteristics and preprocessing

The dataset exhibits characteristics common to digital trace data. First, the temporal distribution of posts is uneven, with significant variations in posting frequency over time due to external events, platform trends, or algorithmic changes. The unevenness was addressed by normalizing dataset values during the analysis phase. Second, a small number of creators (“top voices”) contributed a disproportionately large volume of content. As the study’s analytical unit is the video content (videoId) rather than selected authors’ contributions, this imbalance was deemed acceptable for examining the collective online identity tailored to the #digitalnomad hashtag on TikTok.

The dataset contained very few interactional chains, such as duets and stitches, sharply limiting the ability to observe practices, such as collective storytelling, that typically crystallize interactive forms of collective identity on TikTok. This scarcity may be an artefact of the sampling strategy and Tikapi policies rather than evidence that DNs do not engage in such practices. The absence of these chains is interpreted as a constraint of the corpus, rather than the irrelevance of participatory affordances for this community.

Data preprocessing was performed using a Python script with the pandas library. To ensure data integrity, missing values in the textual fields were replaced with empty strings, and the unique videoId was used to track each entry throughout the analysis pipeline. The author chose to limit the study’s focus to the period from 2020Q1 to 2025Q2 due to the scarcity of data before that (see the distribution and volumes in Figure 1).

Figure 1

Analytical framework

In this study, social media affordances provide the primary conceptual frame for interpreting DN content on TikTok, specifying how platform features condition what kinds of narratives are likely to be produced, amplified, and recognized as meaningful. Concretely, the analysis focuses on three interrelated affordances: relatability, discoverability, and accessibility, as the socio-technical infrastructure through which individual TikToks are rendered legible to broader publics and can crystallize into shared representations of DNs. In this framework, DN’s content is treated as bundles of “memes” in Dawkins’s sense: cultural replicators that spread through reproduction, variation, and selection across digital networks, embedding shared meanings into a collective repertoire. Thus, memetic cultural transmission is positioned as a supporting frame that specifies the unit and mechanism of transmission for affordance-shaped content. Within this framework, Maslow’s hierarchy is deliberately used as a coding taxonomy for performed needs, where narrative segments are mapped to five broad need levels: Basic, Safety, Social, Esteem, Self-actualization, to systematically capture how different videos foreground the satisfaction or deprivation of these needs over time and across the four emergent narrative identities (Tourist, Worker, Pilgrim, Migrant) (see Figure 2).

This operationalization treats needs as discursively enacted signals (e.g., talk about rent, visas, loneliness, recognition) that become visible or suppressed as TikTok’s affordances filter which forms of lack, risk, or fulfillment are algorithmically amplified.

Figure 2

The analysis was conducted in three sequential phases designed to (1) map DN online identity, where a human-led inductive analysis of 107 first posts (June 2023–January 2024) generated an initial codebook (see Codebook of the Qualitative Content Analysis.pdf available in https://github.com/kargam0167/TikTok), combining bottom-up thematic coding with literature on digital nomadism and TikTok affordances. This phase identified four recurring digital nomad narrative identities: Tourist, Worker, Pilgrim, and Migrant, which function as meso-level categories connecting individual posts to recognizable public archetypes. (2) Scaling with structured codes: the identity codebook and Maslow-based need categories were then applied at scale to the full dataset (via LLM-assisted coding), enabling systematic tracking of which needs are most frequently expressed within each identity and how these expressions align with or resist affordance pressures toward aspirational, individualized content; (3) validation and temporal analysis, combined human oversight with statistical checks to ensure coding consistency, and the temporally ordered dataset was used to examine shifts in need expression over time (e.g., from self-actualization narratives toward safety/affordability concerns) within and across identities. These temporal patterns are interpreted through the affordance lens (changing visibility regimes), e.g., how platform mechanisms shape the expression of needs (satisfaction or deprivation), and whether this process can catalyze community cohesion or foster the emergence of collective action. Specifically, the analysis examines how discoverability mechanisms amplify certain expressions of need over others, how relatability features enable shared identification around everyday struggles or aspirations, and how accessibility tools democratize participation in need-based discourse.

Following principles of socio-technical grounded theory (Hoda, 2024), the coding operated at multiple hierarchical levels: (1) open/initial coding (the granular codes: DR-PSC, ET-PF, etc.); (2) axial/intermediate coding—the narratives: Tourist, Worker, Migrant, Pilgrim; (3) selective/advanced coding—Maslow’s needs: Basic, Safety, Esteem, Social, Self-Actualization (see Table 1). This approach reveals how shared experiences and needs projections within each identity narrative may drive the transition from individualized storytelling to the formation of a digitally mediated social movement among nomads.

Table 1 specifies the needs in relation to identified DN identity narratives, with each category outlining specific challenges and motivations, as expressed in the analysed content sample.

The second phase, where a well-defined, pre-existing human codebook was applied to the full dataset of 10,599 videos, is documented throughout in the Supplementary file LLM_Assisted_Coding.pdf.

Identifying significant correlations between codes, code-occurrence matrices were constructed for each of the four identities. To account for the varying frequency of codes, the raw co-occurrence counts were normalized using the Jaccard Index. This similarity measure provides a more nuanced understanding of the relative overlap between code pairs, making it particularly effective for longitudinal analysis across different periods. Furthermore, by mapping the temporal trends in the Jaccard heatmap to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Table 1), the author systematically addresses the core research questions and reveals how TikTok’s platform affordances shape the communicative representations of digital nomad needs, as well as whether there is any potential consolidation around particular representations.

Prominence is calculated by averaging Jaccard co-occurrence scores, statistical measures of how strongly different thematic codes cluster together within each quarter. These scores only reflect actual thematic pairings (non-zero co-occurrences), where higher values indicate tighter conceptual links between themes in the online discourse.

Importantly, the data is aggregated by both need and narrative identity dimension (‘element’ in the dataset), so that each trend line captures the evolving significance of a need category as it is experienced across distinct DN identity narratives. Maintaining this multilevel coding structure is methodologically essential: identity context mediates how specific behaviors (such as platform-specific content creation) fulfill different needs, a distinction critical to the concept of ‘relatability engineering.’ The same behavior can signal financial pragmatism for one identity and social belonging for another.

To reveal long-term patterns and minimize short-term noise, a three-quarter rolling average is applied to each trend line. This smoothing approach clarifies sustained shifts in collective focus, highlighting which human needs are prioritized, expressed, and amplified within the DN TikTok community over time. Such methodology aligns with quantitative cultural analyses of social media trends (Shifman, 2013). To formally assess whether observed Jaccard co-occurrence scores (or their average correlation) are significantly higher than expected by chance, the author performed permutation tests—randomly shuffled codes across posts and recalculated the correlation distribution. Comparing observed values against these simulated distributions yielded p-values and confidence intervals for each code pair, the proportion of permutations in which the random Jaccard score equals or exceeds the observed value. A small p-value (e.g., p < 0.05) indicates that the corresponding code pair co-occurs more often in reality than chance would predict. To robustly control for longitudinal dependencies and repeated measures in psychological needs projections, a mixed-effects linear regression model was fitted, incorporating random intercepts for each unique combination of element (e.g., Tourist, Worker) and need category. This approach accounts for correlation within each need-element group over time, isolating true longitudinal effects from group-specific volatility. This model structure enables an accurate assessment of the platform logic’s effects on need representation trends in TikTok content across elements. The following sections present the results of each level of abstractions through the narratives of particular DN identities.

Results

Tourist narrative

An analysis of tourist-coded narratives reveals strong and persistent correlations between platform-specific codes (DR-PSC) and discoverability affordances (TA-DI), with this relationship only marginally declining in early 2021 but remaining dominant throughout the 2020–2025 period (see Figure 3). For the code pair Platform Specific Content (DR-PSC) and Affordances of Discoverability (TA-DI), the observed Jaccard co-occurrence index was 0.718, substantially above the permutation-based null expectation of 0.246 (p < 0.001). This indicates the codes co-occur far more often than expected by chance, providing robust evidence for a strong, meaningful association and suggesting a core thematic link in the Tourist narrative of the DN community on TikTok. Such patterns exemplify the platform’s role in reinforcing and transmitting tourist identity traits through reproducible content logics and memetic relationships. The qualitative analysis of randomly selected posts from each quarter reveals a narrative centered on popular destinations such as Bali, Mexico, and Thailand, and emphasizes affluent tourists’ hedonistic desires such as luxury housing, beach clubs, and food aesthetics.

Figure 3

Pairs involving platform-specific content (DR-PSC), discoverability (TA-DI), relatability (TA-RL), and identity work (ET-IC, ET-PF), especially when persistently strong over time, are empirical signals of potential collective movement and organization among DNs on TikTok.

However, persistent high code-pair co-occurrence scores for personal and spatial freedom (ET-PF) and discoverability (TA-DI) or platform-specific content (DR-PSC) reflect platform-driven individualism. Further, emergent linkages between visual storytelling (DR-VS), affordances of discoverability and relatability from mid-2024, especially around viral #whatisyourent content, suggest the memetic infrastructure is being adapted to circulate collective concerns, transforming self-branding templates into tools for travel planning and collective knowledge production, the incipient phase of collectivized, bottom-up cultural organization among DNs.

Tourist needs projection

As highly curated destination-focused storytelling foregrounds visual celebration of affordable luxury, exclusivity, and aesthetically pleasing experiences, it routinely highlights basic hedonistic needs of tourists and consistently diminishes the need for self-actualization. Indeed, the qualitatively assessed content implicitly communicates basic needs of tourists, such as food, recreational beaches, and accommodation (see Figure 4).

Figure 4

Quantitative analysis of rolling average Jaccard scores, corroborated by mixed-effects modeling, reveals pronounced volatility in the representation of tourist needs over time. Specifically, basic needs peaked in early 2020 (score = 1.0), dropped sharply to 0.39 in 2022, and then resurged to maximum levels (1.0) by 2024–2025. The longitudinal mixed-effects model, estimating an intercept of 0.388 and a positive slope of 0.009 (p < 0.001), demonstrates a significant upward trend across the time series. This approach leverages all available repeated measures, accounts for temporal dependence, and validates that fluctuations and recoveries in need representation are statistically robust. This pattern mirrors the broader disruptions in travel and work patterns during the pandemic period, suggesting that TikTok content creators adapted their messaging to reflect evolving audience priorities and economic realities. The data reveal that while basic needs dominated the discourse, with a mean representation of 0.776, self-actualization needs remained consistently marginalized, with a mean of only 0.142, indicating that the platform’s algorithm systematically diminishes higher-order psychological needs in favor of immediate, consumable experiences.

The DN’s tourist narrative emphasis on basic hedonistic needs demonstrates broader patterns of experience commodification that actively inhibit the formation of collective action. Consumption-oriented content is engineered to boost audience engagement and secure brand partnerships, ultimately channeling attention toward the satisfaction of lower-order needs as described in Maslow’s hierarchy. By prioritizing individual gratification and avoiding the complexity and vulnerability essential for group mobilization discourse, these content structures make sustained collective action on shared issues such as lifestyle sustainability less likely.

Worker narrative

Worker narratives oscillate between efficiency, opportunity, and collective response to the constraints of traditional 9–5 labor structures. Platform affordances of discoverability (TA-DI) and relatability (TA-RL) deeply moderate this oscillation. Captions like “Teaching Others How to Become Financially Free”, “Helping You Move Abroad,” and “Follow me and escape 9-5” mark these collective moments; however, they maintain an individualistic entrepreneurial ethos. Even for the Worker narrative, the strongest and most persistent correlation throughout the study period is between Platform-Specific Content (DR-PSC) and Discoverability (TA-DI), which exhibited an observed mean Jaccard of 0.726 through all periods compared to a permutation mean of 0.386 (p = 0.0001), reinforcing the idea that DNs navigate fulfillment of location-independent discourse through memetic reproduction of discoverable content. A highly significant overlap was found between the codes for discoverability affordances (TA-DI) and narratives of personal spatial freedom (ET-PF). The observed Jaccard Similarity Mean of 0.588 indicates a strong co-occurrence between these themes, which is substantially greater than the 0.339 mean similarity that would be expected from random chance, as determined by permutation testing. The extremely low p-value (p < 0.001) confirms this is a non-random association, highlighting how platform affordances systematically structure and reproduce individualized narratives of freedom.

Furthermore, the analysis reveals a statistically significant correlation (p = 0.01) between the identity construction code (ET-IC) and platform-specific content (DR-PSC). This p-value indicates that the probability of observing such a strong connection between these codes by chance is only 1%. This suggests that while the overall framing is individualistic, there are distinct moments where identity construction and platform-native relatability converge, creating “flashes” of emergent collectivity. However, these moments of connection are ultimately channeled by the platform’s logic, which favors viral, extractive formats. As a result, the potential for sustained collective action against post-industrial labor conditions is subverted, with user efforts redirected toward algorithmically-rewarded, individualized performance (Figure 5).

Figure 5

Worker needs projection

Early in the study’s timeframe, there are pronounced spikes in safety needs, peaking in conjunction with global uncertainty (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic), prompting intermittent waves of mutual aid, resource sharing, and collective response. As the new monetization strategies emerge, the need for diversification of income and a stable work environment steadily diminishes, and the expression of need for location-independence stays consistently low. Beginning in 2021-Q2, only modest expressions of self-actualization appear, supported by the model’s low intercept for Worker_Self-actualization (Intercept = 0.023), paired with a modestly positive slope (Slope = 0.009), underscoring that these needs were present but grew only slowly over time. Esteem needs among Workers remained consistently negligible throughout the period (Worker_Esteem Intercept = −0.009; Slope = 0.009), providing further evidence of systemic barriers to the visibility and persistence of status-related goals on TikTok. Social needs among Workers, as captured by a higher group-specific intercept (Worker_Social = 0.289), surged from 2024-Q1 in response to immediate collective challenges (e.g., finding belonging in a new locale), but these moments proved transient and diminished by late 2024. Overall, the mixed-effects analysis confirms that both esteem and self-actualization remained at low baseline levels for Worker content, whereas social need narratives, though higher, were periodic rather than sustained (see Figure 6). Critically, the consistently low levels of esteem and self-actualization underscore the presence of systemic barriers within the platform context: TikTok’s logic incentivizes content geared towards relatability and immediate problem-solving rather than fostering narratives of higher goal fulfillment. Spiritual and individual transformation themes do arise, but they are subsumed within the dominant themes of entrepreneurship and adaptation, rarely gathering enough momentum to break out as persistent motifs.

Figure 6

Thus, TikTok’s extractive logic remains evident: while mutual aid and collaborative storytelling emerge in moments of need, sustained structural resistance or collective organization is rare, as algorithmic incentives continually reabsorb these efforts into the dominant logic of personal brand-building and monetization. This dynamic enables intermittent collective action in response to acute need deficiencies but ultimately channels dissent and resistance into forms that are marketable and conform to the platform’s business model, often limiting the potential for sustained structural action of resistance (e.g., to traditional 9-to-5 working paradigms).

Pilgrim narrative

The collective narrative identity of DNs as pilgrims is constructed around a journey toward self-actualization; however, even this narrative is constrained by TikTok’s distinct platform affordances, illustrated in the code co-occurrence matrix over time (Figure 7). Here, again, a robust and consistent correlation between Platform-Specific Content (DR-PSC) and Discoverability (TA-DI) persists across the entire observation period. As seen in the line plot, this relationship consistently registers as the strongest across all periods, with Jaccard scores oscillating between 0.64 and 0.83, peaking in late 2020. This linkage highlights how the aspirational “pilgrim” narrative, which involves leaving behind conventional constraints in pursuit of personal growth, becomes a collective artifact shaped by TikTok’s specific features, such as templates and trending audio. Transformative Experiences (JN-TE) increased in tandem with Personal Freedom (ET-PF) in 2021-Q1 and 2021-Q2, illustrating cyclical upticks in the discourse during periods of mobility restrictions. For instance, moments of “burnout and breakthrough” are dramatized using TikTok’s visual storytelling, with technical features like green screen, duets, and stitched responses transforming personal crises into collective learning moments, broadening the blueprint for others. A qualitatively assessed video post showing a creator’s emotional breakdown over career spatial limitations, followed by a triumphant transition to a travel-oriented lifestyle, encapsulates this process. The juxtaposition of despair and success creates a powerful, transformative message.

Figure 7

The temporal progression of these correlations sheds light on the underlying mechanisms of narrative construction. The central theme of Personal & Spatial Freedom (ET-PF) is consistently reinforced by platform discoverability affordances (TA-DI), as evidenced by a high mean observed Jaccard Similarity of 0.537—substantially above the permutation mean of 0.328 (p < 0.001). Notably, the strength of this correlation intensifies over time, peaking at 0.70 in the second quarter of 2025. This pattern illustrates how platform algorithms increasingly synchronize these narrative elements to amplify their resonance and visibility. The journey’s narrative was initially launched by tightly bundling the promise of freedom with platform-specific formats, as shown by the peak correlation of 0.75 between Platform-Specific Content (DR-PSC) and Personal & Spatial Freedom (ET-PF) in early 2020. This synergy highlights how the “dream” of spatial freedom and self-renewal is rendered algorithmically visible, becoming not just an aspiration but a trending, collectively imagined reality. The discoverability boost not only enables individual stories but also continually mobilizes a wider DN community around the promise of mobility, flexibility, and self-transformation.

Pilgrim needs projection

Examining the needs projection for the Pilgrim narrative, the statistical results substantiate that self-actualization, though thematically central, remains less prominent in TikTok content across all periods (Pilgrim_Self-actualization intercept = 0.033, slope = 0.009). In contrast, social needs, absent before 2021, emerge as the most pronounced, with a markedly higher group-specific intercept (Pilgrim_Social = 0.788, slope = 0.009). This prevalence is manifested through formats centering mutual support, encouragement, and community-building, with the statistical trend indicating sustained and growing collectivization of social needs over time. Esteem needs, associated with identity construction and audience affirmation, display a notable baseline (Pilgrim_Esteem intercept = 0.314, slope = 0.009) and experience intermittent, significant surges toward the end of the observed period (see Figure 8). This pattern reinforces the unique importance of relatability and inspiration in the digital nomad collective, suggesting that periodic spikes in unmet social or esteem needs act as catalysts for collective content production.

Mutual-aid content, collaborative storytelling, and resource-sharing videos proliferate during such periods, resulting in waves of mutual inspiration and collective mobilization. The pilgrim metaphor, reinforced by TikTok’s accessibility affordances (such as green screens), helps transform isolated personal stories, documenting struggles with a stifling job, followed by a leap into remote freedom, into collective blueprints for self-actualization. These vignettes serve as templates for others to follow, reinforcing the broader sense of a shared digital journey.

Figure 8

Ultimately, the Pilgrim narrative on TikTok demonstrates how platform mechanics not only encourage narratives of individual transformation but also provide the infrastructure for periodic, affective waves of collective action. However, these movements are double-edged: while collective identity and action are temporarily strengthened in response to need deficiencies (social, esteem), their form remains shaped and constrained by the platform’s underlying logic, which ultimately privileges viral visibility and monetizable content above sustained grassroots resistance or alternative social organization.

Migrant narrative

The fleeting travel inspiration transformed into a lasting migration narrative through TikTok’s visual storytelling, collectively depicting new locales through the lens of everyday experience. Again, the link between Platform-Specific Content (DR-PSC) and Discoverability (TA-DI) is not only the strongest, but also the most consistent correlation across all quarters in the co-occurrence matrix (Figure 9), with Jaccard scores frequently at or near 1.0 in early 2020, dipping below 0.6, and regaining strength by 2024-Q2 (permutation test mean: 0.370, p-value: 0.0001). This underscores how migration-related content is nearly always crafted to sync with TikTok’s organic trends, such as “Day in my Life” for maximum discoverability. They blend aspirational lifestyle moments (e.g., remote work by the sea) with pragmatic realities, such as local grocery prices and mundane chores, making the migration journey both relatable and tangible. A similarly persistent and cyclical association exists between Identity Construction (ET-IC) and Discoverability (TA-DI), with observed mean Jaccard Similarity: 0.576, Permutation mean: 0.342, and p-value: 0, affirming the TikTok platform as both a showcase for the migration process and a primary environment for constructing one’s new identity. Viral formats include humorous memes, adaptation stories, and cultural “of course” comparisons, which normalize settlers’ adaptation challenges.

Figure 9

Initially, migration content leaned heavily on the Idealization of Experiences (DR-IE) and Personal/Spatial Freedom (ET-PF), especially in 2020, framing migration as an idealized escape from structural problems at home. As time progresses, these correlations decrease, signaling a shift in narrative towards gradual network building.

Migrant needs projection

While basic needs projection witnessed a significant drop in early 2022 (Figure 10), it recovered strongly by the end of 2024 following the trend “We are X, of course we Y” (“I am X, of course I am doing Y”), a performative template for expressing collective identity, emerged in late 2023 and gained significant popularity through early 2024. The trend is characterized by users identifying with a particular group, identity, or profession and humorously, or sometimes poignantly, listing characteristics or behaviors stereotypically associated with that group. One such example is a vlog featuring Filipino friends navigating the evening streets of a Spanish city, humorously contrasting South European cultural habits through statements like, “We are living in Spain, (of course), we eat dinner at 10 pm.”

Figure 10

Social needs, meanwhile, surge in similar periods, spotlighting shifts in focus from individual adjustment to fostering collective belonging. These contrasting peaks and dips of basic and social needs highlight how migration on TikTok transcends mere aspiration, as it becomes rooted in the genuine challenges and realities of settlement, adaptation, and community building. Content increasingly addresses not only practicalities such as housing and cost of living, but also captures the importance of social integration and support.

Although self-actualization themes within the migrant narrative exhibit marked volatility, showing significant spikes in 2020-Q3 and 2021-Q3, they undergo a substantial drop in 2023-Q2. This pattern is reflected in the mixed-effects model, where Migrant_Self-actualization displays a relatively elevated group-specific intercept of 0.524 and a positive slope of 0.009, indicating a strong but uneven presence of growth and transformation stories that periodically recede as daily practicalities take precedence. Esteem needs for migrants, by contrast, begin with a moderate baseline (Migrant_Esteem intercept = 0.301, slope = 0.009), but subsequently face suppression, likely amplified by TikTok’s algorithmic design, which privileges content with broader relatability over that which may trigger negative self-reflection or foster differentiation. Starting from 2021-Q2, the suppression of esteem needs is evident both in the plot and in statistical trends, reinforcing the argument that the platform’s affordances and logic influence not just what kinds of narratives proliferate, but also which facets of collective identity are ultimately foregrounded or marginalized in digital nomad discourse.

Crucially, the longitudinal model highlights that safety and social needs among migrants hold persistently high baselines, with intercepts of 0.728 and 0.697, respectively, and both exhibiting ongoing positive slopes (0.009 each). Periodic drops and spikes in these needs frequently act as catalysts for authentic collective action, manifesting in virtual advice assemblies, activist mobilizations, coordinated responses to urgent issues, and robust mutual aid for new arrivals.

Nonetheless, TikTok’s platform logic remains fundamentally extractive, rewarding visibility and emotional virality over continuity, often undermining the potential for sustained organization and dissent. Despite rapid, memetic surges of collective sentiment through viral challenges or trending campaigns, the data suggest these waves are typically short-lived: once the platform’s spotlight shifts, collective momentum quickly dissipates, leaving the more complex, longer-term needs for stability and community difficult to sustain.

Discussion

This study conceptualizes online collective DN identity on TikTok with four narrative archetypes: “tourists,” projecting affordable luxury and superficial cultural appropriation; “workers” giving practical advice on equipment and remote income; “pilgrims” blending travel with spiritual and mindfulness exploration, and “migrants” addressing the practicalities of relocating for economic reasons. The findings suggest that on TikTok, the core needs embodied by tourist archetypes are symbolically articulated and amplified through hedonism and immediate pleasures. In contrast, workers and pilgrims prioritize safety (stable remote income and societal access) and social connection (community, knowledge sharing). However, pilgrims are the only archetype that has slightly amplified esteem (personal transformation, uniqueness) needs, which are projected across several periods, while migrants’ narratives are unique, with the volatile projection of the self-actualization need. These distinct narrative projections indicate a fragmentation of collective identity, consistent with what Zulli and Zulli (2022) describe as ‘imitation publics’, groups formed through replicable content rather than shared political goals. By channeling these shared needs into hyper-individualized performances, the platform’s affordances appear to prioritize ‘gesticular activism’ (Zhao and Abidin, 2023) and personal branding over sustained collective action. This phenomenon may represent a fundamental tension in contemporary social media culture, where platform affordances simultaneously promote individualistic consumption while inadvertently fostering new forms of collective consciousness around destinations through shared experiences of mobility and travel lifestyle aspiration. Yet, these articulations primarily function as modes of self- and group-signification, reinforcing identity positions and value orientations of middle-class, well-educated, and affluent individuals.

By the end of 2024, DN TikTok content was sparse on cognitively challenging subjects, including risk management, legal uncertainty, cultural integration, and issues of gentrification. The narratives reinforced a performative identity focused on achieving location independence, a trend well aligned with platform algorithms that favor aspirational, engaging narratives. Longitudinal analysis from 2020 to early 2025 shows that themes of personal growth or transformation do not increase in prominence, nor do they shift toward collective goals, such as subversion of 9-to-5 labor logic, even as the community matures. Content remains oriented toward external performance and aesthetic aspiration over intrinsic fulfillment, echoing Zulli and Zulli’s (2022) concept of “algorithmic performativity.” The projection of needs, how creators imagine, rationalize, and materialize lifestyle prerequisites, operates as a memetic process embedded within the platform’s socio-technical system. Tangible content that covers the practicalities of mobile life resonates with audience concerns and is rewarded with reach, while complex explorations of belonging or social change are often set aside. Long before social media, foundational scholars like Dawkins (1976) and Balkin (1998) described memes as units of cultural transmission—ideational replicators that spread through imitation and selection, privileging what can be easily adapted, replicated, and circulated over more complex or nuanced forms of meaning. TikTok, like earlier technologies, amplifies whatever is meme-ready: lifestyle hacks, visual motifs (beaches, laptops, coffee shops), and self-optimization mantras overshadow complex stories of belonging or social contest. Thus, in answering RQ1, it is evident that the DNs’ collective identity on TikTok coalesces around narratives foregrounding autonomy and self-design; affordability and pragmatic know-how resonating with material concerns and community, but often with weak ties. While there are gestures toward collectivity (meetups, hashtags, co-living), the bonds are often ephemeral, dynamic, and networked rather than anchored to place.

To address RQ2, the study conceptualizes TikTok’s affordances of relatability, discoverability, and accessibility as active mediators of social needs. It extends empirical research in Human–Media Interaction (HMI) by illustrating how these affordances structure and channel the expression of psychological needs within selected narrative identities.

By aligning the expression of needs with temporally viral sentiments and platform-coded stereotypes, creators amplify viral scripts over idiosyncratic narratives. This effectively alters the narrative, shifting the focus from growth-oriented needs, particularly for cognitively demanding content, to replication of familiar storytelling forms. Such “memetic bricolage” (Balkin, 1998) and rapid, weak-tie network-driven dissemination paradoxically allow for the spread of lifestyle templates that remain bounded by and dependent on the very structures they may seek to resist, simultaneously constraining the potential for meaningful collective change.

While TikTok’s audiovisual tools, algorithmic promotion, and remix culture may enable distributed forms of resistance and subversion of dominant norms (Chen and Pun, 2025), these affordances remain bound by the platform’s commercial logic and visibility constraints. DNs can collectively negotiate mobility and belonging needs, challenging established ideas and structures, but are also incentivized to present trend-aligned narratives for social validation and discoverability.

To answer RQ3, this analysis focuses on addressing “need deficiencies” that reflect broader shifts in how DN’s lifestyles are imagined and enacted. Studying the constructed, optimized for discovery and relatability DN’s identity narratives, this approach reveals how the TikTok platform prioritizes adaptable self-making (Pilgrim); new forms of security, e.g., affordable and flexible living of Tourist; distributed remote income of Worker, and geo-arbitrage of Migrant (Andino-Frydman, 2023; Habibilla and Fahadayna, 2023) over meaningful resistance to, e.g., legal precarity and community solidarity. DNs’ narratives represent need deficiencies that cluster around unfulfilled social belonging, esteem, and self-actualization. However, the optimization for individualistic solutions to mitigate “growth need deficiency,” highlights a collective gap in addressing complex, systemic problems that cannot be solved through creative personal effort or simple knowledge sharing. Moving beyond individual lifestyle optimization would require a shift to a collective critical consciousness. Such a transition, however, is neither algorithmically favored by the platform nor prominent within the content observed between 2020 and early 2025.

Conclusion

This study demonstrates how HMI scholarship can bridge the analysis of individual need satisfaction and collective action, weaving platform-specific technical determinants into a unified framework for understanding the prerequisites for social movement formation on contemporary digital platforms. Utilizing iterative Socio-Technical Grounded Theory (Hoda, 2024), this study captures how, until early 2025, DN’s individual narrative construction on TikTok aggregates into broader community struggles around affordability and location independence, but rarely addresses shared challenges such as labor standards, legal, or social impact. Platform logic favors individualized, performative content, resulting in privileging commodified narratives over mobilization and political opportunity.

The formation of collective online identity among digital nomads on TikTok is primarily shaped by memetic reproduction and collaborative storytelling, aligning closely with interaction-centric frameworks such as narrative identity theory (McAdams, 2018), cultural transmission theory (Dawkins, 1976; Shifman, 2013), and contemporary memetic identity research (Zhang et al., 2025). While TikTok’s discoverability, relatability, and accessibility support widespread content circulation through features like comments, duets, and response videos that facilitate grievance sharing and negotiated meaning, DN’s creators rarely strategically combine these affordances in ways that enable the three cornerstones of collective action: resource mobilization, shared meaning framing, and creation of political opportunities (Sæbø et al., 2020).

Limitations and future research

This research acknowledges the inherent limitations of social media data, which captures performative and at times utopian projections of reality. On platforms like TikTok, individuals negotiate their identity within algorithmic constraints, where quantifiable metrics amplify the universal need for social approval and monetization. This incentivizes creators to distill complex personal realities into templated, performative narratives.

However, the study is designed specifically to analyze these phenomena, moving beyond the small-scale qualitative studies. It showcases the specifity of the online identity of a liminal group with observable, longitudinal patterns of needs reconstruction and projection. Just as offline hierarchies based on class or ethnicity establish specific psychological need structures, our method reveals how platform affordances create their own set of needs hierarchies within templatable narratives. Reinforced by the competition for visibility, these templates replicate the same dynamics by guiding user performances to satisfy both platform algorithms and shape underlying psychological needs.

In the second half of 2025, analysis reveals noticeable shifts in the DN discourse on TikTok, with an increasing focus on the impact on local communities and questions about the sustainability of the lifestyle. Emerging content from local creators began to call for awareness and engagement, highlighting new perspectives and challenges within the DN narrative. These trends underscore the importance of continued longitudinal analysis, as the platform dynamics and narrative templates evolve in response to broader social debates. Future research could thus investigate how the inference of these new online narrative templates, enabled or constrained by specific platform affordances, may shift the trajectory of collective DN identity online. This might be especially pertinent when cross-platform coordination (with more organizationally-oriented venues such as Discord, WhatsApp, or Telegram) is leveraged to achieve communicational ambidexterity for effective collective action.

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