Beginning with the premise that discrete units of analysis are not given but made, we need to ask how any object of analysis—human or nonhuman or combination of the two—is called out as separate from the more extended networks of which it is a part. (Suchman, 2007: 283)
Finally, there are two things to note with regard to this being a Scandinavian case study, as opposed to an investigation with a more global focus. In the way in which leading staf from select Nordic news organizations describe the coming together of journalism and algorithms, I believe that these interviewees’ strategic roles and, in many cases, their position as experts beyond the Scandinavian context, provide a valuable and convincing account of how, where and when algorithms have come to mater.
Also, in emphasizing the notion of enactment, I reject the notion of context as an explanatory factor. This may seem somewhat counterintuitive at first, given that I have been talking about “the particular context” of news media as my starting point. However, as Steve Woolgar and Javier Lezaun point out, there is a crucial diference between what ethnomethodologists call “context of action” and “context in action”—“between context as an explanatory resource available exclusively to the analyst, and the context as an emergent property of interaction available to its participants” (2013: 324). Although algorithms need to be understood in context (in this case journalism) the meaning of algorithms cannot be reduced to context either. Just as news media professionals’ talk about algorithms cannot be understood separately from the context of journalism, journalism itself needs to be understood as the contingent upshot of material-discursive practices.9 The interviews provide rich and important data about journalism’s current condition, especially as it relates to the Scandinavian countries and to algorithms. Yet, this chapter is not about journalism or specific news organizations per se. To invoke the way I put it at the end of chapter 2: “Yes, journalism. Yes, Scandinavia. Yes, technology. Yes, economic challenges. Yes, social media platforms. Yes, algorithms. Yes, to all of the above, and no one in particular.” The story is more about the relationship between the elements and the new realities that emanate from that, rather than any one of these in isolation.
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