My thesis proposes algorithmic vibes as a concept for understanding how everyday women entrepreneurs make sense of social media algorithms, and the entanglement between this sense-making and their entrepreneurial practices on digital platforms. Algorithmic vibes captures the intuitive and affective, speculative and anticipatory, and situated orientations of everyday women entrepreneurs towards social media algorithms. By everyday women entrepreneurs, I refer to women who use social media to sustain small businesses, such as dance teachers and dog groomers. I focus on this group because they are absent from existing literature on digital entrepreneurship, which focuses on highly visible entrepreneurs, such as professional content creators and start-up founders in high-growth or venture-backed start-ups.
Drawing on 28 semi-structured interviews with UK-based women entrepreneurs, supplemented by follow-up correspondence and some observation, I make three core arguments about algorithmic vibes. First, I argue that algorithmic vibes are intuitive and affective orientations through which participants feel their way through platform logics and navigate visibility in conditions of opacity and uncertainty. Second, I argue that algorithmic vibes are speculative and anticipatory, formed in response to the unpredictability of algorithms. Finally, I argue that algorithmic vibes are constructed in different ways based on participants’ social, cultural, economic, and professional positioning within society and the platform economy.
My thesis opens up a discussion on how women entrepreneurs’ orientations to algorithms are constructed through lived experience and platform participation, inviting renewed attention to the uneven conditions under which visibility is pursued and felt in the platform economy. As such, my research speaks to ongoing concerns about platform labour, algorithmic governance, and the conditions under which visibility is made possible. It contributes to debates in sociology, media and communications, and critical marketing and business studies. My findings are also relevant to policy-makers and stakeholders working to support women’s entrepreneurship.
