Abstract

This article examines how female university students perceive algorithmic personalization as shaping gendered visibility in digital security communication. Drawing on postdigital feminism and feminist security studies, it conceptualises perceived algorithmic visibility as a postdigital security condition through which users interpret which bodies, voices, and critiques become more or less legible in militarized digital spaces. Empirically, the study is based on an online survey with 425 female university students in Croatia. The questionnaire measured subjective algorithmic awareness, institutional media trust, feminist engagement, and reported encounters with security-related content, and included open-ended questions on algorithmically mediated security communication. Statistical analyses identify four user segments—mainstream security consumers, neutral observers, critical analysts, and digital activists—who differ in trust, subjective algorithmic awareness, and feminist engagement. Results show that 72% of respondents report primarily encountering security narratives through social media feeds they perceive as algorithmically curated, while active information seeking is rare. Higher institutional trust is associated with lower subjective algorithmic awareness, whereas greater awareness correlates with feminist engagement and skepticism toward mainstream military narratives. Qualitative responses indicate that participants perceive feminist security perspectives as less visible in their feeds and describe a dominance of state-centered and militarized content. The article argues that, in postdigital security publics, algorithmic systems are perceived and anticipated as epistemic actors that shape users’ sense of visibility, legitimacy, and communicative agency. It calls for critical algorithmic literacy, accountable platform governance, and feminist-informed policy approaches that safeguard epistemic diversity in postdigital security communication.