Optimizing Desire: Data-Driven Platform Governance and the Institutionalization of Conversion-Oriented Persuasion in Fast Fashion Short-Video Ecosystems

• In Event: Sustainability, Climate, and the Politics of Consumption

Abstract

Digital platforms have transformed fashion consumption by embedding commerce directly within algorithmically curated short-video feeds. While research on digital overconsumption frequently emphasizes individual impulse buying and affective decision-making, less attention has been devoted to how persuasive practices become institutionalized within platform infrastructures. This paper examines how data-driven optimization systems structure and stabilize conversion-oriented content production in fast fashion short-video ecosystems.

Drawing on a triangulated qualitative-computational design, the study analyzes platform-produced training materials, monetization guidelines, and engineering communications alongside a stratified sample of 250 fast fashion videos. Grey document analysis traces how engagement metrics, experimentation, and conversion indicators are formally codified and communicated to creators. Topic modeling and qualitative coding identify recurrent persuasive templates, including urgency framing, transformation narratives, and embedded product anchoring.

Preliminary findings indicate that recommendation infrastructures operate through recursive feedback loops in which behavioral micro-signals are aggregated, experimentally evaluated, and translated into visibility allocation. Monetization dashboards and performance metrics incentivize creators to align content structures with conversion-oriented criteria. Over time, high-performing persuasive formats appear to stabilize across independent creators, suggesting the institutionalization of template-based persuasion within the fast fashion content field.

By situating digital overconsumption within data-driven platform governance rather than solely individual psychology, this research contributes to economic sociology, platform studies, and sustainability scholarship. The findings highlight how recursive optimization systems participate in organizing accelerated fashion turnover, raising broader questions about the infrastructural conditions under which sustainable consumption becomes structurally constrained.

Author

• Jiazheng Nie, University of Leeds