Algorithmic Anthropomorphizing, Platform Gossip, and Backlashes: Aspirational Content Creators’ Narratives About YouTube’s Algorithm on Reddit

IF 5.5 1区文学 Q1 COMMUNICATION

Social Media + Society Pub Date : 2025-04-12 DOI:10.1177/20563051251331761

John R. Gallagher, Antonia Pecoraro Hernandez

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.

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算法拟人化、平台流言和反击：有抱负的内容创作者在 Reddit 上关于 YouTube 算法的叙述

本文探讨了 r/NewTubers 子论坛上有抱负的内容创作者（ACCs）是如何理解和讨论 YouTube 算法的。本研究对 144 篇明确提及算法的 r/NewTubers 帖子进行了主题分析。分析揭示了四大主题：神话化和拟人化、算法解密、平台八卦和社区反弹。NewTubers 经常将算法拟人化，赋予其类似人类的特质和能动性。然而，这种拟人化经常受到其他 NewTuber 的质疑，他们强调算法的技术性和内容质量的重要性。这些叙述凸显了ACCs在与不透明的平台算法世界进行交涉的过程中形成的公共、非机构的算法素养。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Social Media + Society COMMUNICATION-

CiteScore

9.20

自引率

3.80%

发文量

111

审稿时长

12 weeks

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.