This talk presents work-in-progress from a PhD study examining how ordinary TikTok users experience, understand, and negotiate the platform’s recommendation system. Drawing on Seaver (2022) and Hennion (2005), among others, the study explores whether the sociology of taste, a field concerned with how cultural preferences are formed, cultivated, and transformed through practice, might offer a productive lens for understanding user experience and practices in relation to the logics of algorithmic curation and personalization.
The study uses a two-phase qualitative approach: an extended app walkthrough (now complete), followed by in-depth interviews integrating data donated by the participants. This presentation focuses on the walkthrough phase, sharing observations about how taste appears to operate on TikTok, and how these observations raise questions about where and how user agency operates within algorithmically curated environments. These questions will be explored directly with participants in the next phase of the study.
Speaker biography:
Michelle Nidoy is a PhD candidate at Queensland University of Technology’s Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC) and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S). Her research examines the intersection of user agency and algorithmic curation of taste, and is part of the larger Australian Research Council Discovery Project on Australian Experiences of Algorithmic Culture on TikTok. Her visit is supported by ADM+S.
