ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Media Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1563592
This article is part of the Research TopicDigital Citizenship in the New Era of Social MediaView all 9 articles
Resistance or compliance? The impact of algorithmic awareness on people's attitudes toward online information browsing
Provisionally accepted
- Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
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With the continuous development of big data technology, algorithms are increasingly penetrating daily life. On the one hand, people rely on algorithms to filter information of interest online. On the other hand, people are trapped in "information cocoons." In this study, we investigated how and why people react under the impact of algorithmic awareness when they are searching for information online. Using a 2 × 2 mixed design (algorithmic awareness × browsing purpose), this study reveals the mediating roles of perceived power and internal control. Algorithmic awareness significantly increases people's compliance, especially when they browse online information with a certain purpose, despite all information in the experiment being presented randomly. Algorithmic awareness increases people's sense of power and internal control over information, which, in turn, increases algorithmic compliance behavior. The results examine behavioral changes in web-browsing decisions from the perspective of the endogenous user experience. By studying the influencing factors of mobile new media users' compliance and resistance to algorithms, this study is helpful in assisting users to eliminate their state of technological unconsciousness and achieve good algorithmic use.
Keywords: Algorithmic consciousness, algorithmic power, Compliance, Resistance, Internal control
Received: 20 Jan 2025; Accepted: 14 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 YUAN, SHI, SU and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Yin SHI, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
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