Between Platforms and Habits: A Qualitative Study of Cultural Consumption in the Digital Age

Abstract

This article explores the transformations of cultural consumption practices in the era of platformisation, analysing the role of algorithmic recommendation systems in shaping users’ cultural repertoires, emotions and identity trajectories. The present contribution is situated within the theoretical framework of Science and Technology Studies and is based on a qualitative survey conducted through elicitive interviews with a sample of 50 Users in Italy. The results demonstrate how platforms such as YouTube and TikTok mediate everyday cultural consumption through distinct logics: YouTube is configured as a space for reflective and in-depth consumption, while TikTok favours practices of rapid emotional engagement and continuous immersion. The text discusses the tensions between situated agency, pragmatic adaptation and forms of resignation, highlighting how users oscillate between attempts at reappropriation and passive acceptance of algorithmic dynamics. Furthermore, the study documents how platforms do not merely select content, but act as active agents in the construction of new forms of digital subjectivity, shaping emotions, preferences and patterns of meaning.

In a context characterised by multiple temporalities and pervasive, though often unacknowledged, surveillance, this work aims to contribute to a more articulated understanding of human-algorithm interaction. It offers theoretical and political implications for the contemporary sociological debate on platform society.