"Don't Mess Up My Algorithm": Phatic Communication and Algorithmic Contagion in Meme Sharing
This research addresses the tension between social practices and algorithmic control for users of social media platforms, offering design implications to mitigate user powerlessness.
The study investigated how users perceive direct message meme exchanges on Instagram as influencing algorithmic recommendations, finding that participants often feel powerless due to opaque linkages and constrained controls, leading to the concept of 'algorithmic contagion'.
On algorithmic social platforms, exchanging memes via direct messages (DMs) serves as phatic communication that affirms relationships, yet users often interpret these exchanges as signals shaping personalized recommendations, creating tension between relational practice and algorithmic control. This study examines how users perceive DM meme exchanges on Instagram rather than auditing Instagram's underlying recommender mechanisms, and how beliefs about DM-recommendation linkages shape coping strategies and feelings of powerlessness. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 21 active meme-DM users. Participants classified memes as recipient-friendly or recipient-unfriendly based on relational fit; many described the spread of unfriendly memes as "algorithmic contagion." Controls were constrained by relational norms, low perceived efficacy of feedback tools, and opaque DM-recommendation linkages. We articulate how DM-based relational practices are entangled with personalization infrastructures and propose three design implications: transparent linkage explanations, conversation-level opt-outs, and conservative learning that down-weights DM-originated signals.