Managing unwanted visibility
How transnational Korean women content creators experience and manage harmful algorithmic visibility on global social media
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20508917 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jeehyun Jenny Lee (0000-0001-9980-2836, University of Illinois Chicago, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 28 |
| Issue | 13 |
| Pages | 2396-2412 |
| Publication date | 2025-10-03 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Information Communication & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1369-118X • E-ISSN: 1468-4462 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1369118x.2025.2518586 |
| OpenAlex | W4411532644 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 40 |
In the creator economy, algorithmic visibility is widely regarded as an ideal and crucial for content creators’ success. In this context, many studies have focused on social media content creators’ algorithmic labor to optimize and maintain algorithmic visibility. Drawing on in-depth interviews with transnational Korean women content creators whose visibility greatly depends on their ethnic, racial, and cultural identity, this study shifts the focus from the creators’ experiences with desirable algorithmic visibility to their experiences with unwanted algorithmic visibility, mainly their exposure to racist and fetishizing global audiences. The creators’ experiences illustrate how the value of algorithmic visibility greatly depends on who the content creators are exposed to and entails visibility contextualizing strategies, rather than visibility maximizing strategies, to build meaningful engagement on global social media. Through these findings, this study advances an intersectional and transnational lens to understand algorithmic visibility and labor, attending to the politics of algorithmic visibility beyond how much visibility the creators can attain to whom and in what ways they are made visible on global social media platforms
Advertising · Business · Geography · Internet privacy · Media studies · Political science · Public relations · Social media · Sociology · Visibility · World Wide Web · Asian Culture and Media Studies · Computer Science · Digital Marketing and Social Media · Gender, Feminism, and Media
The Hypersexuality of Race
Algorithms of Oppression
The Relevance of Algorithms
Algorithmically recognizable
Feminist filter bubbles
The algorithmic imaginary
Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex
Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex
Mapping Internet Celebrity on TikTok
Feminist Research Practice
The promotional regime of visibility
Algorithmic precarity in cultural work
Economies of Difference and Identity-based Content on a Digital Platform
The Shadowban Cycle
How Instagram’s algorithm is censoring women and vulnerable users but helping online abusers
Managing visibility on YouTube through algorithmic gossip
Want to be on the top? Algorithmic power and the threat of invisibility on Facebook
The intimacy triple bind
Blogging while angry
The social mediascape of transnational Korean pop culture
He has a way gayer Facebook than I do
Visibility labour
Algorithms in practice
What is the Transnational in Transnational Feminist Research
Introduction toPerforming Refusal/Refusing to Perform
Strategic Invisibility
Peripheral Creator Cultures in India, Ireland, and Turkey
Bringing Bourdieu to a Content Farm
Filter Bubbles? Also Protector Bubbles! Folk Theories of Zhihu Algorithms Among Chinese Gay Men
StopAsianHate on TikTok
From 'Networked Publics' to 'Refracted Publics
Gaming the System
The New Visibility
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |