“Thank you, next”: A Call for Intentional Design

Abstract

As a social network science axiom, homophily informs the current design of Web 2.0 platforms, like Spotify. As a result, sociotechnical systems propagate current hegemonic structures such as historically male-dominated markets like the music industry. To understand how the current design of sociotechnical systems promote existing power structures, this investigation performed an empirical social network comparison between the organic 2018 hip-hop collaboration network and Spotify's automated related hip-hop artist network. This study produced several interesting findings including, (1) organic network tie formation differs from automated networks, (2) homophilous and heterophilous connections were positively correlated with artists’ gender, and (3) statistically significant homophilous male connections were observed in Spotify’s related Hip Hop artist network but not in the organic network. By and large, these findings suggest that Spotify’s sociotechnical architecture and affordances promote the existing patriarchal structure.