Negotiating Repetition in Personalized Social Media Feeds Feed Management and Social Media Fatigue among Chinese International Students in Sweden

Purpose: This study examines how Chinese international students in Sweden experience perceived repetition in personalized social media feeds, how they manage feeds that no longer meet their purposes, and how they relate these experiences to social media fatigue. Theory: Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) is used as a limited theoretical lens to interpret information processing, selection, and attention. Method: Ten semi-structured online interviews were conducted. Interview data were processed through descriptive extraction and cross-case comparison to identify recurring patterns relevant to the research questions. CLT informed only the later interpretation of accounts concerning information processing, familiarity, selection, and attention. Results: Three interrelated patterns were identified: negotiating relevance, familiarity, and novelty; managing unsatisfactory feeds; and experiencing social media fatigue in wider use contexts. Familiar content could remain useful or comforting but could also become predictable or low in additional informational value. Participants managed such feeds through practices including swiping, searching, feedback, platform switching, and disengagement. Social media fatigue sometimes appeared alongside perceived repetition, but was also related to habit, procrastination, stress, topic sensitivity, and changing purposes. The findings distinguish perceived repetition from structural narrowing, relevance from additional informational value, and feed management from algorithmic feedback. They also show how personalised feeds form part of students’ wider digital information environments.