Understanding Algorithmic Folk Theories: Tracing Community-Based Knowledge on TikTok

FAIN: DOC-293820-23

Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ 85281-3670)
Sarah Florini (Project Director: February 2023 to present)
Elizabeth Grumbach (Co Project Director: June 2023 to present)
Erica O’Neil (Co Project Director: June 2023 to present)

An ethnographic study of social media content creators comparatively analyzing folk theories and current academic theories of algorithmic governance. 

This project seeks collaborative team funding to strengthen an equal partnership between academic researchers at Arizona State University and community researchers from The Online Creators’ Association (TOCA) to gather community-based knowledge that TikTok content creators circulate to understand and resist algorithmic governance. We will conduct interviews to map how creators conceptualize the forces that impact their everyday lives: algorithmic content curation and opaquely-defined moderation. Participants will be recruited from TOCA, which is predominantly composed of people from historically marginalized groups. We will publish two academic papers: 1) a content analysis identifying folk theories; 2) a comparative analysis between folk theories and current academic theories of algorithmic governance. We seek to reveal overlapping narratives and produce a shared vocabulary to enable academics and community members to more effectively intervene in the spread of mis/disinformation.