Extractive Mechanisms in Democratic Media: Platform Capitalism and the Paradox of TikTok Live Streaming Infrastructure

Abstract

The proliferation of live streaming platforms has precipitated a paradigm shift in media production, ostensibly democratising content creation while simultaneously establishing novel mechanisms for value extraction. This study examines TikTok Live as an exemplary platform of platform capitalism, analysing the tension between participatory media rhetoric and centralised architectural control. Through systematic literature review and thematic analysis of platform mechanisms (2017–2024), we investigate how TikTok's infrastructure functions as an extractive tool within the attention economy. Our analysis reveals that despite generating $3.5 billion in annual revenue and lowering technical barriers to broadcasting, TikTok reproduces traditional media hierarchies through algorithmic governance and platform rent extraction. We identify a "90-9-1" participation inequality pattern and demonstrate how virtual gift economies obscure asymmetric power relations. The study situates these findings within emerging regulatory frameworks, including the EU Digital Services Act and AI Act, arguing that current platform architectures represent reconfigured media power rather than genuine democratisation. These findings have significant implications for digital labour policy and platform governance.

Keywords: Platform capitalism, TikTok, live streaming, digital labour, algorithmic governance, attention economy, media democratization