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Protecting presence: Sustaining status and visibility in algorithmically mediated communities, with Bookstagram as the empirical context
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School of Business |
Master's thesis
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en
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73
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This thesis studies how individuals negotiate and protect status and visibility within algorithmically mediated cultural communities, using Bookstagram, an online reader community within Instagram, as an empirical context. Bookstagram is conceptualized as a digitally mediated cultural field in which platform infrastructures, community norms, and individual interpretative processes together structure what becomes visible, valuable, and legitimate. Drawing on consumer culture theory, with the specific focusing on cultural capital and research on algorithmic mediation, the study explores how status is continuously interpreted and sustained under uncertain algorithmic conditions.
Based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with Finnish Bookstagrammers, the findings show that maintaining status on Bookstagram unfolds through a layered and cyclical process. Algorithmic conditions and community norms co-produce dominating visibility patterns, which participants interpret as signals of credibility and belonging. These dominating patterns are further interpreted through perceived visibility which explains the factors of what makes something valuable or credible. These interpretations take further form of explorative and protective measures, including engagement routines, aesthetic labour, and authenticity work. Through these practices, individuals maintain recognizability and community legitimacy while protecting and exploring their readerly identity.
The study introduces the concept of protective adjustment to describe how status is stabilized through ongoing interpretation, adaptation, critical evaluation, and identity protection rather than strategic optimization alone. By demonstrating how cultural capital is co-produced through the combination of digital infrastructures, community dynamics, and individual interpretative processes, the research contributes to consumer culture theory and expands understanding of how cultural value and status are negotiated within contemporary platform-based communities.