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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how people engage with algorithms through relational and moral orientation rather than technical understanding. Drawing on ethnographic research on Douyin and WeChat, it argues that algorithmic engagements are relational practices that manage visibility and social consequences.

Paper long abstract

Algorithmic engagement is often conceptualised as an interaction between an individual user and a computational system: users provide feedback, algorithms personalise content, and users respond to the resulting feed. Drawing on sixteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Enshi, a small city in China, this paper argues that such engagement can also be organised through sociality——users’ relationships with others, the expectations attached to those relationships, and broader moral orientations in broader social life.

Focusing on short-video platforms, particularly Douyin, I examine three forms of practice through which sociality shapes algorithmic engagement: other-oriented concern in algorithmic feedback, the negotiation of relational boundaries when platforms recommend acquaintances, and the calibration of algorithmic visibility. The operation of such sociality is often enacted through concrete ordinary ethical judgements, which form a spectrum ranging from habitual tacit understandings to more reflective and deliberate reasoning.

The research goes beyond the user-system dyad prevalent in algorithm studies, showing that platform actions are constituted through sociality rather than merely interactions between users and algorithms. It also extends ordinary ethics into algorithmically mediated life by demonstrating how everyday platform practices become sites where moral judgement is enacted.

This study also addresses the panel’s interest in distributed, relational intelligence. Human–AI interaction is never shaped by the two parties alone; in many cases, it can only be fully understood by situating it within the specific relational and moral contexts in which it unfolds. These are precisely the contexts to which anthropology can bring sustained attention.