Exploring content creators’ belief systems within their social media ecosystems

Abstract

Content creators have become key figures within social media ecosystems. This article provides an analytical and methodological proposal that expands current understandings of content creators’ content strategies, choices, and activities by exploring their sensemaking mechanisms within these ecosystems. Our proposal considers creators’ belief systems about various aspects of social media ecosystems, which reflect disenchanted and enchanted dimensions of sensemaking through cognitive, behavioral, and experiential indicators. We examine tensions of (dis)enchantment in creators’ belief systems and their overlaps, for example explainability/unexplainability, work/vocation, information production/creative output, and (para)sociality/meaning. Our contribution is threefold: first, we conceptualize and sketch a single social media ecosystem to locate creators’ objects of belief. Second, we propose a visual mapping method, drawing on critical cartography studies and cognitive mapping, to explore creators’ perspectives of their social media ecosystem. Third, we provide an analytical approach to explore disenchanted and enchanted dimensions of sensemaking within creators’ beliefs and belief systems.