Climbing up the algorithm: Female fitness creators and their visibility management on YouTube

Over time, the online digital environment has experienced a massive growth in content and users, which makes it more challenging to become noticed online. Within this environment, social media platforms have become a destination for people to become creators. YouTube is a dominant tool for creators to establish themselves by publishing videos in order to gain an audience and connect within their community. For female fitness creators, YouTube serves as a core platform for publishing workouts and earning an income, which for some is a full-time job while for others it serves as side income. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the fitness industry experienced a heavy impact as a result of businesses closing down which led many female fitness professionals to turn to YouTube and other social platforms to continue their profession, although some were already immersed and dedicated to a fully online career. The online fitness realm faces a salient challenge of saturation of fitness creators and content, which makes it difficult to become noticed in a sea of creators. This challenge is tied to YouTube’s algorithm as it plays a key role in determining the served content to users. The community of female fitness creators on YouTube has garnered minimal academic research and exploring the connection of these creators to the management of visibility with YouTube’s algorithm is not known. Thus, the objective of this study is to explore the following research question: How do female fitness creators manage their visibility with YouTube’s algorithm? In order to gain insight into female fitness creators, this research consisted of a mixed-method approach with 12 qualitative interviews, a participant observation and a computational network analysis. This combined qualitative and quantitative research explores the role of female fitness creators, connected communities through the use of a keyword, and how YouTube’s algorithm is navigated in order to manage visibility. Female fitness creators revealed their experience and the elements involved in their role that contribute to how they manage their visibility. There are practices and strategies implemented as well as varying understandings of YouTube’s algorithm which are influenced through algorithmic gossip and other creators. The creators emphasize how algorithmic bias can be experienced from a hiatus or lack of activity which can inhibit your visibility. This research fills the academic gap by contributing insight into how female fitness creators manage their visibility with YouTube’s algorithm especially with the incontrollable growth of the online realm. Furthermore, the findings of this research imply that the management of visibility from female fitness creators is not only applicable to their category, but to all creators online who strive to gain visibility.