Navigating algorithmic intransparency in social media: professional Instagram users' algorithm sensemaking
Year: 2021
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Information technologies facilitated the shift from rigid, layered, and hierarchical organizational structures to highly flexible, networked arrangements.In these new forms of organizing, information technologies' role shifted from being a tool that supports hierarchical organizational structures to a mechanism that acts as a proxy for new organizational forms.Yet, the role of information technology in organizations remains greatly under-researched and undertheorized.In this regard, one of the research gaps relates to the way members of partial organizations engage in the sensemaking of their work.Although the literature on sensemaking in organizations does exist, it is mainly focused on traditional formal organizations.However, there is little understanding of how members of partial organizations such as professional bloggers that are organized through social networks make sense of unknown events such as new social media algorithms.Therefore, this thesis pursues the following research question: How do professional social media users make sense of intransparent algorithms?To answer this question, thorough literature was conducted, a tentative theoretical framework was developed, and interview data that pertains to the sensemaking of Instagram social media algorithms were collected and analyzed.As a result, the following findings were identified:1. Professional bloggers tend to rely on intuitive, "non-professional" sensemaking during the sensemaking process; 2. The interviewed bloggers use both individual-level and socially assisted sensemaking; 3. When engaging in socially assisted sensemaking, bloggers tend to use distributed sensemaking and learn from distant strangers rather than from their immediate network; 4. It has been inferred that such processes result in subjective imaginaries as the sensemaking outcome.Moreover, these findings challenge the current understanding of organizational sensemaking.In this regard, the following factors can explain such divergence with the existing literature.First, there is a lack of up-to-date conceptualization of organizations, informing both complete and partial organizational structures.As a result, the existing literature has based its findings on an outdated conceptualization of organizations.Second, members of partial organizations exhibit substantially different behavior than employees of traditional organizations.They are more autonomous, and they show a greater blending of their professional and personal lives.Lastly, this study's findings may diverge from existing literature due to research design limitations such as the sample's size and characteristics.Yet, there may be additional reasons that could explain such a difference in findings.The important thing is that this explorative research has revealed some important gaps in the literature on organizational sensemaking and how we conceptualize modern organizations.
Author: Eugenia Rau
Language: English
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3165808149