Trending women in STEM: Visual space-making on TikTok

While previous research has established foundational knowledge on how women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) social media content creators use digital platforms to combat stereotypes, less is known about how they make space for themselves on visually dominant platforms. We address this gap by theorizing visual space-making as the coordinated use of visual cues into reproducible, platform-legible visual configurations that create recognizable “places” of belonging and authority within networked counterpublics. We employ visual clustering of video frames and topic modeling of text to identify recurring patterns in STEM-related TikTok content and examine their relationship with audience engagement. Results show that identity-oriented visuals are more prevalent than expertise-oriented visuals but applied differently across content topics. Identity-oriented visuals are more likely to be associated with higher comment rates, whereas expertise-oriented visuals are associated with higher share rates. Results suggest implications for balancing identity and expertise self-presentation in digital spaces for women in STEM.