Pornographic algorithms: Algorithmically mediated pornification and South Korean women’s everyday resistance on social media

In this article, we examine Korean social media users’ anecdotes regarding social media algorithms, contextualized within the intricate dynamics of South Korea’s rape culture and the intensifying male pornographic fantasies for women’s flesh. Drawing on digital ethnography, we conceptualize their understandings of algorithms as pornographic algorithms—a set of imaginaries about how social media algorithms mediate the visibility of pornographic content in distinct ways and users’ social media engagement accordingly. Through case studies of the four most popular social media platforms—Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and YouTube—we explore how these pornographic algorithms are perceived as the main key actors in pornification in concert with the country’s existing rape culture, and how users develop tactics to navigate porn-friendly social media. We argue that social media use for Korean women is an ongoing everyday fight against a new form of sexism that is now convolutedly processed, normalized, and facilitated by algorithmic governance in the digital realm.