Hyperreal Differential Order in Douyin’s Tuwei Ecology: A Socio-Technical Systems Analysis of Algorithmic Visibility
Recommendation systems reorganize culture by linking classification, visibility, and value. This article analyzes Douyin’s #tuwei ecology as a socio-technical system in which platform architecture, creator formatting, audience evaluation, and urban-rural symbolic hierarchies interact through recursive feedback. We formalize this system as four coupled operators—commensuration, sign packaging, metricized valuation, and reception feedback—and derive two observable indices: an item-level transfer-efficiency ratio and a class-level diffusion–appreciation asymmetry index. Using 123,300 public #tuwei videos collected between May and November 2024, multimodal coding of 500 videos, and sentiment analysis of 61,284 comments, we identify a stable diffusion-appreciation asymmetry. Practice-oriented rural videos receive relatively strong approval after encounter, but they diffuse less widely than spectacle-oriented performances optimized for rapid recognition, ironic forwarding, and interaction density. Corpus-level tests (χ2, N = 123,300; Cramér’s V≈0.32) and an outlier-sensitivity analysis confirm the pattern independently of the coded-sample size. To explain this pattern, we propose hyperreal differential order (HDO), a systems concept describing how platform infrastructures repackage embedded cultural practices into feed-compatible sign forms and then differentially amplify them across segmented attention circuits. We position HDO against algorithmic visibility, platformization, and metric power, showing what each leaves underspecified. The study offers a mechanism-based account of how short-video systems reorganize vernacular culture, symbolic power, and interpretive authority without relying on overt exclusion.