Making sense of green narratives on TikTok in digital communities: platformed practices of environmental communication

Introduction Social media platforms have reconfigured environmental communication, positioning green influencers as key players who translate environmental issues into narratives suited to the platform. While research has examined how these creators construct credibility and engage audiences, less attention has been given to how audiences themselves interpret and evaluate such content. This study investigates how young adults collectively make sense of environment-related content shared by Italian green influencers on TikTok, and which criteria guide their attribution of attention, credibility, and communicative legitimacy. Methods Three focus groups involving twenty-four regular TikTok users aged 19–31 discussed two contrasting videos selected from a corpus of environment-related videos published in 2025 by Italian creators. Data were analysed through reflexive thematic analysis. Results Participants' evaluations developed through two relatively autonomous judgements, attentional capture and communicative legitimacy, rather than along a single evaluative continuum. Their different combinations generated four interpretive configurations: convergent evaluation, suspicious capture, sympathetic disengagement, and delegitimising rejection. Participants displayed considerable awareness of platform-specific engagement strategies, yet this awareness did not necessarily lead to disengagement. Discussion The coexistence of awareness and continued engagement suggests a form of negotiated acceptance, which we describe as a tacit pact between creators and audiences. This pact breaks down when perceived promotional intent or insufficient epistemic grounding undermines a creator's legitimacy. These results extend research on platformed credibility by showing that legitimacy judgements are relational, contextual, and continuously negotiated through social interaction, rather than fixed properties of content or individual dispositions. Ultimately, these findings show that young adults do not merely receive environmental narratives on TikTok, but collectively negotiate the conditions under which such narratives deserve to be watched and trusted.