No abstract

Online communities provide spaces for people who are vulnerable and underserved to seek support and build community, such as LGBTQ+ people. Today, some online community spaces are mediated by algorithms. Scholarship has found that algorithms have become deeply embedded in the systems that mediate our routine engagements with the world. Yet, little is known about how these systems impact those who are most vulnerable in society. In this paper, we focus on people's everyday experiences with one algorithmic system, the short video sharing application TikTok. TikTok recently received press that it was suppressing and oppressing the identities of its growing LGBTQ+ user population through algorithmic and human moderation of LGBTQ+ creators and content related to LGBTQ+ identity. Through an interview study with 16 LGBTQ+ TikTok users, we explore people's everyday engagements and encounters with the platform. We find that TikTok's For You Page algorithm constructs contradictory identity spaces that at once support LGBTQ+ identity work and reaffirm LGBTQ+ identity, while also transgressing and violating the identities of individual users. We also find that people are developing self-organized practices in response to these transgressions and violations. We discuss the implications of algorithmic systems on people's identity work, and introduce the concept of algorithmic exclusion, and explore how people are building resilience following moments of algorithmic exclusion.

This paper reports on a qualitative study of social media use for political deliberation by 21 U.S. citizens. In observing people's interactions in the "sprawling public sphere" across multiple social media tools in both political and nonpolitical spaces, we found that social media supported the interactional dimensions of deliberative democracy-the interaction with media and the interaction between people. People used multiple tools through which they: were serendipitously exposed to diverse political information, constructed diverse information feeds, disseminated diverse information, and engaged in respectful and reasoned political discussions with diverse audiences. When people's civic agency was inhibited when using a tool, they often adopted, or switched to, alternative media that could afford what they were trying to achieve. Contrary to the polarization perspective, we find that people were purposefully seeking diverse information and discussants. Some individuals altered their views as a result of the interactions they were having in the online public sphere.

Little is known about the challenges and successes people face when piecing together multiple social media to interact in the online public sphere when: seeking information, disseminating information, and engaging in political discussions. We interviewed 29 US citizens and conducted 17 talk-out-loud sessions with people who were using one or more social media technologies, such as Facebook and Twitter, to interact in the online public sphere. We identified a number of challenges and workarounds related to public sphere interactions, and used our findings to formulate requirements for new political environments that support the interactions in the public sphere. Through evolving requirements generation, we developed a new political deliberation technology, dubbed Poli, which is an integrated social media environment with the potential to enable more effective interactions in the public sphere. We discuss several remaining questions and limitations to our tool that will drive future work.

No abstract