Tiktok 'dogshows' and the amplification of online incivility among Gen Z influencers in the Philippines

Studies on digital platforms and online incivility have established that uses of humour can lean towards cyberbullying and hate speech. Focusing on TikTok's affordances and cultures of online incivility, this paper studies how TikTok influencers and their audiences manoeuvre legal-but-harmful humour. Specifically, we study how online incivility has become an accepted and negotiated practice in the Filipino context through the phenomenon of ‘dogshows’, where users throw jabs at individuals using derogatory humour and provocative memes. Through online observation and textual analysis of TikTok posts and their corresponding comment sections, we demonstrate how online incivility is subtly amplified through humour and play, and how Gen Z and young children became both objects and producers of these dogshows. We argue that while there is already peer surveillance at work on TikTok, there needs to be more deliberation between TikTok's policies and at-risk groups to make the platform a more civil space.