Let's Influence Algorithms Together: How Millions of Fans Build Collective Understanding of Algorithms and Organize Coordinated Algorithmic Actions

TL;DR

This study explores how online fan communities develop collective understanding of algorithms and organize coordinated actions, revealing strategies that enable large-scale algorithmic mobilization over two years.

Contribution

It introduces a two-year ethnography of fan activities showing how core fans foster collective understanding and organize large-scale algorithmic actions across platforms and cultures.

Findings

Core fans use rhetorical strategies to persuade others.

Collective understanding is built through collaborative steps.

Algorithms are mobilized for large-scale fan actions.

Abstract

Previous research pays attention to how users strategically understand and consciously interact with algorithms but mainly focuses on an individual level, making it difficult to explore how users within communities could develop a collective understanding of algorithms and organize collective algorithmic actions. Through a two-year ethnography of online fan activities, this study investigates 43 core fans who always organize large-scale fans collective actions and their corresponding general fan groups. This study aims to reveal how these core fans mobilize millions of general fans through collective algorithmic actions. These core fans reported the rhetorical strategies used to persuade general fans, the steps taken to build a collective understanding of algorithms, and the collaborative processes that adapt collective actions across platforms and cultures. Our findings highlight the key factors that enable computer-supported collective algorithmic actions and extend collective action research into the large-scale domain targeting algorithms.