CSAS Lecture Series | “They Have My Kundli”: Understanding Urban Indian Social Media Users’ Beliefs about Social Media Algorithms

Attend in person or via Zoom: https://myumi.ch/y1qjR

This talk will explore how urban Indians make sense of algorithms and the role they play in personalizing and amplifying social media content. Based on interviews with 30 social media users, it will examine users’ knowledge of, attitudes toward, and practices with algorithms. It will detail people’s complex views of algorithms and their social impact, informed by long-standing cultural beliefs equating technology with globalization and aspiration as well as a degree of critical digital literacy, especially among younger people. The talk will also highlight users’ beliefs about the role algorithms play in suppressing or amplifying content and how algorithms align with or contravene their content preferences, including a reflection on how these preferences reinforce deep-seated views about gender and class.

Pranav Malhotra is an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan Department of Communication and Media. His research focuses on how the affordances of social and mobile media intersect with cultural and relational norms to influence how people engage with information and each other in mediated spaces, especially in understudied social and political contexts. In particular, his work has looked at how urban Indians make sense of their everyday engagement with social media. Malhotra’s research has been published in leading journals like Social Media+Society, Journal of Computer-mediated Communication, Communication Monographs, Political Communication, and International Journal of Communication.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at tinagrif@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.