Educational, political, or moral/religious content is increasingly present on TikTok, so contemporary social dynamics legitimize the process of digital mediation regarding these institutional values. Based on 286 open-ended survey answers and subsequent interviews with 45 Romanian TikTok users, this article applies social constructivism to explore the intersubjective side of algorithmic experiences. The significance of such a framework lies in its ability to elucidate the manner in which users actively construct their social environments, which may initially appear as isolated individual experiences but ultimately unveil shared algorithmic interpretations. Thus, the participants highlight three recurrent institutional themes in relation to TikTok’s algorithm: (1) algorithm as political profiling, (2) algorithm as moral plethora, and (3) algorithm as educational benchmark. Findings show that users’ stories related to algorithms are widely conceived within institutional frameworks. These narratives play a role in shaping what Berger and Luckmann call “intersubjective sedimentation” within the intricate interconnection between institutional and algorithmic realities. The ways in which TikTok users legitimize the presence of these institutional actors on their For You page should be seen as a form of agency negotiation between users and machines. The legitimating role of stories about algorithms also highlights the institutional necessity of intergenerational socialization, which is why the contents made by such institutional actors are more and more actively mediated through TikTok.

中文翻译：

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当故事变得制度化时：TikTok 用户如何使算法意义建构合法化

教育、政治或道德/宗教内容越来越多地出现在 TikTok 上，因此当代社会动态使有关这些制度价值观的数字调解过程合法化。本文基于 286 份开放式调查答案以及随后对 45 名罗马尼亚 TikTok 用户的采访，运用社会建构主义来探索算法体验的主体间性方面。这种框架的重要性在于它能够阐明用户主动构建社交环境的方式，这些环境最初可能表现为孤立的个人体验，但最终揭示出共享的算法解释。因此，参与者强调了与 TikTok 算法相关的三个反复出现的制度主题：(1) 算法作为政治定性，(2) 算法作为道德过剩，(3) 算法作为教育基准。调查结果表明，与算法相关的用户故事被广泛地在制度框架内构思。这些叙述在制度现实和算法现实之间错综复杂的相互联系中发挥了塑造伯杰和勒克曼所说的“主体间沉积”的作用。TikTok 用户在“为你”页面上合法化这些机构行为者的方式应被视为用户和机器之间的代理谈判形式。算法故事的合法性也凸显了代际社会化的制度必要性，这就是为什么这些制度行为者制作的内容越来越多地通过 TikTok 积极中介。