Sensemaking and discursive legitimacy of dark patterns in Indian digital markets

Purpose This paper aims to investigate how consumers make sense of dark patterns on e-commerce platforms and collectively negotiate the (il)legitimacy of manipulative design through sensemaking in online discourse. Design/methodology/approach This research adopts constructivist grounded theory and uses sensemaking as a sensitizing lens. Reddit threads in which users discuss their experience with dark patterns on Indian mobile apps form the empirical basis for this study. Iterative line-by-line focused and theoretical coding were used to inductively derive a bounded set of discursive response moves and thread-level discursive trajectories. Findings Analysis reveals a repertoire of eight response moves through which individual users make sense of dark patterns, often by invoking multiple moves within the same discussion. Thread-level analysis shows that collective sensemaking about dark patterns is seldom uniform and remains contested. Response moves combine into two prominent but contrasting discursive trajectories at a thread level: (a) problematization and escalation and (b) normalization and countering. The (il)legitimacy of dark patterns emerges as an outcome of these discursive trajectories. Originality/value Rather than treating dark patterns as merely unethical design or compliance violations, this study shows that users discursively negotiate the (il)legitimacy of dark patterns through a bounded repertoire of response moves that combine into discursive trajectories. These trajectories, in turn, stabilize or undermine particular interpretations. In doing so, the study extends sensemaking theorization to everyday digital discourse where plausibility, contestation and multi-vocality produce evaluative outcomes. These insights inform Information Systems scholarship by reframing user agency as publicly enacted stance-taking and by offering an observable lens on how ethics and governance concerns become amplified, diluted or normalized.