{"title":"Algorithmic Anthropomorphizing, Platform Gossip, and Backlashes: Aspirational Content Creators’ Narratives About YouTube’s Algorithm on Reddit","authors":"John R. Gallagher, Antonia Pecoraro Hernandez","doi":"10.1177/20563051251331761","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines how aspirational content creators (ACCs) on the r/NewTubers subreddit forum understand and discuss YouTube’s algorithm. This study employs thematic analysis of 144 r/NewTubers posts that explicitly mentioned algorithms. The analysis reveals four main themes: mythologizing and anthropomorphism, demystification of the algorithm, platform gossip, and community backlash. NewTubers often personify the algorithm, attributing human-like qualities and agency to it. This anthropomorphism, however, is frequently challenged by other NewTubers who emphasize the algorithm’s technical nature and the importance of content quality. These narratives highlight the formation of public, non-institutional algorithmic literacies among ACCs as they negotiate the opaque world of platform algorithms.","PeriodicalId":47920,"journal":{"name":"Social Media + Society","volume":"183 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.9000,"publicationDate":"2025-04-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Social Media + Society","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051251331761","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper examines how aspirational content creators (ACCs) on the r/NewTubers subreddit forum understand and discuss YouTube’s algorithm. This study employs thematic analysis of 144 r/NewTubers posts that explicitly mentioned algorithms. The analysis reveals four main themes: mythologizing and anthropomorphism, demystification of the algorithm, platform gossip, and community backlash. NewTubers often personify the algorithm, attributing human-like qualities and agency to it. This anthropomorphism, however, is frequently challenged by other NewTubers who emphasize the algorithm’s technical nature and the importance of content quality. These narratives highlight the formation of public, non-institutional algorithmic literacies among ACCs as they negotiate the opaque world of platform algorithms.
期刊介绍：
Social Media + Society is an open access, peer-reviewed scholarly journal that focuses on the socio-cultural, political, psychological, historical, economic, legal and policy dimensions of social media in societies past, contemporary and future. We publish interdisciplinary work that draws from the social sciences, humanities and computational social sciences, reaches out to the arts and natural sciences, and we endorse mixed methods and methodologies. The journal is open to a diversity of theoretic paradigms and methodologies. The editorial vision of Social Media + Society draws inspiration from research on social media to outline a field of study poised to reflexively grow as social technologies evolve. We foster the open access of sharing of research on the social properties of media, as they manifest themselves through the uses people make of networked platforms past and present, digital and non. The journal presents a collaborative, open, and shared space, dedicated exclusively to the study of social media and their implications for societies. It facilitates state-of-the-art research on cutting-edge trends and allows scholars to focus and track trends specific to this field of study.
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