(Re-)framing the Homeless Experience

Exploring Homeless Lives and Identities on TikTok and YouTube

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22029/oc.2025.1467

Keywords:

homeless, YouTube, TikTok, vlog, diary online, self-presentation

Abstract

Despite the ongoing prevalence of homelessness throughout the world, the experience remains highly stigmatized. Presentations of homelessness in traditional media tend to render subjects faceless, nameless, static, and passive, dehumanizing them in the process. In response to this presentation, some homeless individuals are using social media to share their lives and experiences. This _Article examines the social media posts of two young homeless women. It explores their experience and presentation of homelessness in their daily videos on TikTok and YouTube. Acting as a confessional and relational diary online, posting on social media allows these women to challenge existing perceptions and narratives about homelessness by showing their authentic day-to-day experience of it. By sharing their lives online, these women offer their viewers a deeply intimate, vulnerable, and relational window into the experience of homelessness, which challenges the faceless, nameless and largely invisible experience depicted in traditional media. They achieve this by sharing their routines of self-care and care for others; by participating in public space and community; and by performing gratitude, selflessness, hard work, and humility. Sharing their experience of homelessness on social media enables these women to craft a self-presentation, framing themselves as more-than-homeless.

Author Biographies

  • Ümit Kennedy, Western Sydney University

    Dr Ümit Kennedy is a digital ethnographer and social media researcher interested in identities, narratives and communities online. Her research explores the convergence of the self with networked digital media, as well as the methods and ethics of investigating digital lives and cultures. Ümit’s research areas include genres of vlogging, influencer culture, automedia, and virtual and auto-ethnography. She is a member of the Life Narrative Lab and a researcher with the Young and Resilient Research Centre in the Institute of Culture and Society at Western Sydney University.

  • Shima Sardarabady, University of Konstanz

    Shima Sardarabady is a postgraduate research student in Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Konstanz. Her current research explores narratives of homelessness in digital spaces. Shima’s research interests include digital and visual anthropology, focusing on themes such as racism, social movements, and homelessness. She has recently worked as a research assistant with the Young and Resilient Research Centre in the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University.

Downloads

Published

2025-05-31

Issue

Section

_Articles