Evolution of management control in platform organizations: a case study on the Veneto creators community on Instagram

The growth of social media platforms has transformed the organization of digital labour, giving rise to new forms of work that depend heavily on algorithmic systems for visibility, audience reach and economic opportunities. Within this context, content creators increasingly operate in environments where platform algorithms influence not only content distribution, but also strategic and behavioural decisions. This thesis investigates how Instagram creators perceive and experience algorithmic governance, with particular attention to algorithmic control, opacity, anxiety and behavioral responses. The study focuses on creators belonging to the Veneto Creators Community and adopts a survey-based research design combining quantitative analysis with qualitative insights derived from open-ended responses. Data were collected from 52 Instagram creators and analysed through descriptive statistics, reliability testing, correlation analysis and exploratory group comparisons. Qualitative comments were also used to contextualize the statistical findings and provide a deeper understanding of creators’ experiences. The results indicate that creators generally perceive Instagram as exerting a significant influence over visibility and content performance. Perceived algorithmic control and algorithmic opacity emerge as the most prominent dimensions, suggesting that creators recognize both the platform’s influence and the difficulty of understanding its mechanisms. Experiences of visibility reduction and perceived shadow banning are relatively widespread, while emotional responses such as frustration, stress and anxiety vary across respondents. The findings also show that creators adopt a combination of selective compliance and pragmatic adaptation strategies, including content optimization, topic avoidance and alternative visibility management techniques. Correlation analysis further reveals a strong relationship between perceived algorithmic control and algorithmic opacity, while emotional responses appear more heterogeneous. The thesis contributes to the literature on algorithmic management, platform governance and digital labour by demonstrating how managerial functions can be exercised through algorithmic visibility systems even in the absence of formal employment relationships. The findings suggest that Instagram operates not only as a technological infrastructure for content distribution, but also as a socio-technical environment that shapes behaviour, expectations and opportunities within the creator economy. Keywords: algorithmic management; creator economy; Instagram; platform governance; shadow banning; digital labour.