“The Magical World of the Algorithm”. Imaginary, Perception and Interaction of TikTok Users with their Algorithm

TikTok has become one of the main platforms through which young(er) generations see and understand the world; the number of people who use the platform to get their news has doubled since 2020 (Pew 2023) and the way in which the platform delivers content to people has been the subject of debate because of the algorithmic curation of the for you page. This has lead academics (Boeker, Urman 2022) and organisations (The Wall Street Journal 2021) to carry out studies to try and understand how the platform algorithm works. Because of the relevancy of the platform, as well as current debates on the effects of entirely algorithmic feeds on news acquisition we decided to carry out in-depth interviews with TikTok users aged 18-34 to understand the ways in which they interact with the platform and content they find, as well as the understanding they have of platform affordances and algorithms. We opted for a grounded theory approach in order to let TikTok users guide us towards what was most relevant to them. What emerged from the thematic analysis of 20 of these interviews is the extent to which users develop algorithmic imaginaries (Bucher 2017) and folk theories (DeVito, Gergle e Birnholtz 2017) in order to understand the platform, which leads them to interact with it in ways that they believe will guarantee a good experience. Moreover, the interviewees used a language that made the it apparent that not only they build a relationship with their algorithm, but they include an affective dimension in their domestication processes that leads them to interact with specific types of content to personalise their platform experience. This confirms the fact that users are not only aware of the algorithm, but they see as an actor with whom to build a relationship and interact. The results of our analysis show that most of our interviewees care about their algorithm (Siles, Meléndez-Moran 2021) enough to engage with content in a way that – in their opinion – allows them to always have a positive experience on the platform. What also emerged is the way in which people react to the idea of having a datafied self, and the idea that a platform like TikTok is collecting information on them in order to provide positive platform experiences: this was not always seen as a negative, as interviewees seemed to be willing to share their data in exchange for good recommendations within the platform. These results are presented within a folk theories and domestication processes framework, looking at the different ways in which users understand and interact with TikTok.