Abstract
This Master's thesis examines how Black queer women use TikTok, a popular entertainment app, as a site of everyday self-making, examining the relationship between the platform's algorithmic structure and user agency in affirming queer identity online. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with four Black Women who Love Women (WLW), this project explores how routine engagement practices (such as liking, searching, lingering on videos, and even scrolling) are used to cultivate a safe and affirming "For You" feed that enables self-exploration and expands queer possibility.
Chapter 1 focuses on how users actively work with TikTok's algorithm to shape their digital environments. It argues that through intentional, everyday engagement strategies, participants produce what can be understood as an "algorithmic self": a dynamic, evolving reflection of identity formed through interaction with the platform's recommendation system. Rather than centering interpersonal connection in the way most social media platforms do, TikTok fosters a more reflective mode of engagement in which users are often in dialogue with themselves, using algorithmic feedback to affirm who they are while continuing to imagine who they can become. Chapter 2 turns to moments when harmful content disrupts these cultivated spaces, particularly misogynoir and biphobia, alongside other ideological forms of violence that persist within digital spaces. Focusing on how participants respond to these interruptions, the chapter examines the use of everyday (dis)engagement strategies—namely, the seemingly simple act of scrolling—to signal disinterest and recalibrate their algorithm in order to preserve affirming digital spaces. This process reveals not the breakdown of user agency, but the ongoing ways participants negotiate and resist even in these moments of rupture.
Ultimately, the study demonstrates how Black queer women use both engagement and refusal to actively shape their digital worlds in ways that sustain identity and make queer futures imaginable. In doing so, this project importantly reframes digital agency and resistance beyond visible content production (often centered in Black scholarship) to foreground the intimate, often invisible ways users assert themselves behind the screen.
