Digital Users

How does Boyd define the relationship between architecture and affordances in networked publics?

"The architecture of a particular environment matters and the architecture of networked publics is shaped by their affordances" (Boyd, 2010, p.1)

What four affordances does Boyd identify as shaping networked publics?

Persistence (automatic archiving), replicability (content can be duplicated), scalability (potential for great visibility), searchability (content accessible through search) (Boyd, 2010)

How do affordances destabilise social life according to Boyd?

"Such affordances do not determine social practice, they can destabilize core assumptions people make when engaging in social life" (Boyd, 2010, p.8)

What is Nagy & Neff's core critique of how affordance has been used in communication studies?

It has served to "separate questions of the materiality of technology from discussions of social construction and human agency" (Nagy & Neff, 2015, p.2)

How do Nagy & Neff define imagined affordance?

"Imagined affordances emerge between users' perceptions, attitudes, and expectations; between the materiality and functionality of technologies; and between the intentions and perceptions of designers" (Nagy & Neff, 2015, p.1)

Why are misperceptions analytically significant according to Nagy & Neff?

"Misunderstandings, misperceptions, and misinterpretations are not technical bugs but software and hardware features that encode possibilities for action" (Nagy & Neff, 2015, p.5)

How do Nagy & Neff avoid social constructivism?

Imagined affordance "takes materiality as the communicative ground through which the meanings of technology are negotiated and renegotiated" (Nagy & Neff, 2015, p.7)

What is Hutchby's definition of affordances via Fussey & Roth?

"Possibilities that enable and constrain action" — acknowledging materiality while avoiding technological determinism (Hutchby, 2001, via Fussey & Roth, 2020, p.663)

What is Seaver's core argument about algorithms?

Algorithms should be understood as "unstable objects that are enacted through the varied practices that people use to engage with them" (Seaver, 2017, p.1)

What is the distinction between 'algorithms in culture' and 'algorithms as culture'?

'In culture' treats algorithms as discrete objects; 'as culture' holds they are "enacted by practices which do not heed a strong distinction between technical and non-technical concerns" — "not technical rocks in a cultural stream, but rather just more water" (Seaver, 2017, p.5)

How does Bucher define the algorithmic imaginary?

Ways of thinking about what algorithms are, what they should be, how they function, and what these imaginations, in turn, make possible" — crucially, the imaginary "does not merely describe the mental models that people construct about algorithms but also the productive and affective power that these imaginings have" (Bucher, 2018, 157 & 115)

What does Felaco & Pelliccia argue about algorithmic imaginaries?

"Algorithmic imaginaries are not misconceptions but represent the most comprehensive understanding that users can formulate based on their interactions with algorithmic systems" (Felaco & Pelliccia, 2024, n. d)

What are 'folk theories' in relation to algorithms?

Users develop "folk theories based on recurrent experiences, which they use to explicate the outcomes of technological systems, thereby shaping their responses and behaviors toward these systems" (Felaco & Pelliccia, 2024)

How do users conceptualise TikTok's algorithm according to Bhandari & Bimo?

"At most, they understood it as an external entity that amalgamated their data input" (Bhandari & Bimo, 2022, p.6)

What is the 'algorithmized self'?

TikTok users "engage with versions of themselves, as mediated through the algorithm" — selfhood derived primarily from reflexive engagement with algorithmic content rather than social connections (Bhandari & Bimo, 2022, p.9)

How did algospeak users relate to the TikTok algorithm according to Steen et al.?

Participants "largely anticipated how TikTok's algorithm would read their videos" and adapted language accordingly — e.g. 'unalive', 'le$bean' (Steen et al., 2023, p.1 & p. 11)

What does the TikTok algorithm's adaptation to algospeak demonstrate?

"Over time, the TikTok algorithm is learning and understanding the intended meaning behind algospeak" — compelling users toward new terms in a continuous feedback loop (Steen et al., 2023, p. 11)

What does Gerrard's study of pro-ED communities reveal about platform power?

Platforms "simultaneously push and deny problematic content to their users" (p.27) — hashtag moderation "tells concerned parties that platforms are willing to intervene" (p.29) without actually removing content, revealing "the politics behind their interventions" (p.28) (Gerrard, 2018)

What strategy do pro-ED communities use to remain partially visible according to Gerrard?

Users develop "disclaimers of denial" and coded visual language to remain "visible enough to find other users…but sufficiently hidden to avoid moderation" (Gerrard, 2018, p.30)

What does Latzer mean by 'enchanted sensemaking'?

Users compensate for ‘the lack of knowledge and awareness regarding how algorithmic selection systems function" through inscribing faith into algorithmic logic — "faith represents the not-knowing, the irrational basis of trust" (Latzer, 2025, p.7)

How widespread is algorithmic enchantment empirically according to Latzer?

Approximately one in four Swiss internet users "believe that content recommendations on social media or health apps are controlled by a higher power" (Latzer, 2025, p.9)

How does Wilson define algorithmic divination?

Users "read the algorithms they are subjected to and create a folk mythology of how the algorithm works, narrating the significance of the algorithmically-dealt content they receive" (Wilson, 2024, p. vii)

What does Wilson argue algorithmic divination betrays?

"Algorithmic divination betrays new media users' longing for spiritual enchantment in the face of the capitalist mediation on which the algorithm depends" (Wilson, 2024, p. vii)

How does co-agency operate in algorithmic divination according to Wilson?

"Algorithmic divination is fundamentally interpretive and results in a co-agency between user and algorithm" (Wilson, 2024, p.15)

What does the WitchTok community reveal about algorithmic divination in practice?

Users consider TikTok "a powerful partner with which to conduct readings, channel deities [and] connect to a collective conscious" — including giving it "offerings" in the form of content (St. Lawrence, 2024, p.1)

How do some WitchTok creators leverage divination in content production?

By using "no hashtags, description, or sound, leaving all direction up to the algorithm itself" — the imagined capacity directly shapes what is produced (St. Lawrence, 2024, p.8)

What is the invisible realm that algorithmic divination constructs according to Lazaro?

Not "a supernature populated by entities and spirits with whom one must communicate" but "a digital infrastructure, an algorithmic duplication of the world populated by billions of data points" (Lazaro, 2023, p.157)

How does Lazaro frame the relationship between digital signals and classical divination?

"Digital signals have replaced divine signs, and data now have the same function as the omens of the past: to immunize decision-making against failure" — but unlike classical divination, "predictive analytics are employed at scale by corporations and states can more readily perpetuate systemic inequalities" (Lazaro, 2023, p.159)

What does Sweeney argue about the normative subject in interface design?

"The normative subject is usually constructed as White, male, and presumptively heterosexual, and therefore unproblematic and uncomplicated as a design option. Female and non-White identities are seen as potentially problematic in terms of meeting design goals that promote 'authority' or 'trust'" (Sweeney, 2016, p.222)

What is Brock's definition of the interface?

"Interfaces, rather than programming languages or physical design, are the medium through which humans primarily interact with ICT algorithms, symbols and practice" (Brock, 2018, 1020)

What is the resistance/conformity paradox in digital platform engagement?

Algospeak illustrates "a dynamic interplay between resistance and compliance" (Felaco & Pelliccia, 2024) — to resist algorithmic constraints users must engage with and conform to the algorithm's underlying logic. As Bucher argues, "resistance is not so much about the refusal to be governed by algorithms... but about the practical engagement with an ascending force" (Bucher, 2018, p.117) — resistance and conformity are structurally inseparable within capitalist platform architectures

What does Sweeney argue about race and gender in interface design?

Interfaces are "contact zones where complicated power dynamics play out" — anthropomorphisation as a design strategy "relies on gender and race as foundational infrastructural components," encoding semiotic meanings into design that reproduce structural inequalities (Sweeney, 2016, p. 215 & p,225)

What is Bucher's central claim about algorithmic power?

"It is not the algorithm, understood as coded instructions that enables or constrains actions but, rather, the perceptions and imaginations that emerge in situated encounters between people and algorithms — indeed, the algorithmic imaginary. If we want to understand the social power of algorithms, then, critiquing their workings is not enough. While algorithms certainly do things to people, people also do things to algorithms." (Bucher, 2018, p. 117)

How does Bucher demonstrate that algorithmic imaginaries shape platform behaviour?

Through "clicking consciously" — users adapt their posting behaviour, timing, and language to influence algorithmic outcomes, and "the practices also have the ability to affect the very algorithms that helped generate these responses in the first place" (Bucher, 2018, p.116) — the imaginary is constitutive of the system it imagines

How does Bucher demonstrate consequences for minoritised bodies?

Transgender users Robin and Hayden find that profiling algorithms cannot accommodate non-binary gender identity — Hayden observes algorithms "only put two and two together when the way things work in society can be quite the opposite." As he argues: "people aren't a math problem" (Bucher, 2018, p. 100) — algorithmic classification reproduces social binaries

How does Cho define 'default publicness'?

A design bias toward default publicness presumes that being-in-public carries little to no risk, that all bodies are legislated by state and social/informal policing equally" — ignoring "centuries of policy, violence, and cultural mores that conspire to allow white heteromasculinity, at the expense of all other embodied inhabitances, the ability to relax and express in public" (Cho, 2018)

What drives default publicness as a design schema according to Cho?

Default publicness is "a prerequisite for the successful extractive operation of late capital via what recent observers have termed 'platform capitalism'" — making user demographic data "as robust, verifiable, and easily indexed as possible" for advertiser monetisation, regardless of the risk this creates for marginalised users (Cho, 2018)

How does Cho demonstrate that heteronormative identity assumptions are woven into design?

"In default publicness, heteronormative understandings of identity as static, singular, intrinsic, and state-validated are woven into design" — exemplified by Facebook's real names policy which "prioritizes market and state interests over users'" and deactivated drag queens' profiles when 8.7% of accounts were flagged as "fake" (Cho, 2018)

What does Mohamed et al. argue about coded inequity in AI systems?

Benjamin (via Mohamed et al.) argues, "coded inequity is perpetuated precisely because those who design and adopt such tools are not thinking carefully about systemic racism" — institutionalised harms replicated by automated decision-making tools should be understood as "continuous to, and inextricably linked with, histories of racist expropriation" (Schroeder et al., 2018, cited in Mohamed et al., 2020)

What is 'ethics dumping' and what does it reveal about AI development?

he export of "harms and unethical research practices by companies to marginalised and vulnerable populations or to low and middle income countries" along "the old fault lines of colonialism" (Mohamed et al., 2020) — exemplified by Cambridge Analytica beta-testing algorithmic tools in Kenya and Nigeria due to weaker data protection laws before deploying in US and UK elections

What does Borau et al. (2021) demonstrate about gendered AI design?

Female gendering of AI bots "increases humanness perceptions of bots and acceptance of AI" (Borau et al., 2021) — empirically confirming Sweeney's argument that anthropomorphisation relies on gender as a foundational design component, with measurable psychological consequences for users

What does Frosh mean by 'moral affordances' of media?

The kinds of moral responses to represented content that arise from the embodied, technically and culturally shaped relations between people and communication technologies" (Frosh, 2018) — interfaces don't just enable action but shape what kinds of moral response are possible

What are Frosh's two modes of interface attention?

Operative attention — scanning the functionality of objects displayed, seeking what can be done with them. Hermeneutic attention — attending to the symbolic meaning of what is shown, immersing in representational content. GUIs default to operative attention, which can structurally undercut deeper moral engagement (Frosh, 2018)

What historically novel situation do digital interfaces establish according to Frosh?

"Digital interfaces have established a historically novel situation, where moral response to distant suffering depends on the smallest movements of our fingers and eyes" (Frosh, 2018) — moral agency is now enacted through habitual sensorimotor gestures

What are Frosh's three attributes of the GUI?

Interactive real-time screen (responsive surface enabling immediate sensory relations), haptic vision (eyes functioning like organs of touch), and user-indexicality (quasi-physical connection between user and representation through pointing, clicking, dragging) — together creating an integrated embodied experience (Frosh, 2018)

What does Bucher argue the black box metaphor risks obscuring?

Treating algorithms as black boxes enacts an understanding of the algorithm as knowable only through the relation between inputs and outputs—obscuring how algorithms are felt, experienced, and worked with —and foreclosing analysis of imaginaries, practices, and power relations. Crucially, "it might not always matter what the algorithm is but rather how and when people imagine and perceive algorithms" (Bucher, 2018, chpt. 5)

What does Seaver's 'algorithms as culture' framework demand methodologically?

It rejects algorithms as "discrete objects" within culture, treating them instead as "heterogeneous and diffuse sociotechnical systems" enacted through human practice — demanding researchers "enact algorithms ethnographically" rather than treating them as black boxes knowable only through inputs and outputs. Cultural and ethnographic analysis, not technical audit, becomes the appropriate method (Seaver, 2017)

What is Brock's Critical Technocultural Discourse Analysis (CTDA)?

A methodology "evaluating technologies as an assemblage of artefacts, practices and cultural beliefs" (Brock, 2018) that "requires the incorporation of critical theory — critical race, feminism, queer theory — to incorporate the epistemological standpoint of underserved ICT users so as to avoid deficit-based models of underrepresented populations' technology use" — technology is not neutral but shaped by the sociocultural context of its design and use

What makes TikTok qualitatively distinct from other platforms according to Bhandari & Bimo?

: Unlike platforms that "obfuscate the fact of algorithmic intervention, TikTok dispenses with this illusion by highlighting the role its algorithms play in shaping user experience" (Bhandari & Bimo, 2022, p.5) — users "need not be following or otherwise engaging with other creators to see their videos," decentring social connection entirely in favour of algorithmic curation