Who gets heard: algorithms and the feminist message

I have been a content creator online for more than eleven years, long enough to watch visibility shift from a merit-based system to an algorithmic one. When social platforms first appeared, a post that people engaged with would naturally be shown to more people. That feedback loop pushed creators to make good work.

Around late 2016 and early 2017, the loop changed. I noticed something ironic: the more subscribers I gained, the less organic reach my posts had. Followers began messaging me to say they hadn’t known I’d posted, because nothing showed up in their feeds. They only saw my work if they searched my name or went to my page. Other creators were seeing the same thing. Platforms were no longer distributing content by its quality, but by their algorithms.

At the same time, advertisers, platforms and brands started to see how much influence individual creators had, and that became a disruptive force against traditional advertising. Paying creators for sponsored content turned into a new industry. The line between communication professionals and everyone else blurred, because anyone could become a communicator just by posting. People who used to receive information passively became active participants, and brands learned to profit from their attention, reach, consumption, sharing and circulation.

Platforms then rolled out campaign after campaign to keep people creating and engaging. What got made was no longer shaped by what an audience might need or what a creator actually thought. It was shaped by incentive programs and by the platform’s own idea of visibility and scale. In that system, information bubbles are not accidents or bugs. They are the foundation that decides which kinds of expression are rewarded, repeated or erased.

What this does to a movement

Algorithmic mediation doesn’t only affect individual self-expression. It changes how social movements travel. In The Displaced Realm, I tried to trace the goals and the limits of three waves of feminism since the 1960s, and I came to believe that many of the limits of today’s fourth wave come from this kind of mediation.

The feminist discourse people encounter most online may already carry privileged narratives. In South Korea, for example, feminist movements sometimes meet strong opposition not because of what they are asking for, but because many people have never heard the arguments accurately in the first place. Plenty of young Korean men turn defensive at the word “feminism” alone. When I looked into it, I could trace many of their misconceptions back to social media posts: mixed information and pseudo-analysis made for viral reach, not for accuracy. Sensational content brings in viewers and followers, but the misunderstandings it creates are much harder to undo once people have built an emotional resistance to the subject.

Half-true stories are also easier to believe. A story feels more convincing than a plain fact.

What communicators can do

Over the next five to ten years, people who work in communication will face harder questions. First, how do you work with a platform’s algorithm without giving up the truth of what you are saying? Second, how do you hold on to your responsibility as a communicator without being pulled into information bubbles and incentive programs?

I think part of the answer is to lean into multimedia and interactive forms. To get past prejudice and bias, communicators can rely less on lecturing and one-way information, and more on approaches people take part in and feel with their senses. Immersive installations are one example. They lower an audience’s defenses while keeping their curiosity alive, and they offer a way to reach people that doesn’t depend on winning the algorithm.

That idea is the reason my installations ask people to touch, lift or walk in before anything is revealed.

Written in 2025. Lightly edited for the web.