Programmed Sociality
Increasingly, we have come to rely on algorithms as programmable decision-makers to manage, curate, and organize the massive amounts of information and data available on the Web and to do so in a meaningful way. Yet, the nature and implications of such arrangements are far from clear. What exactly is it that algorithms “do” and what are the constitutive conditions necessary for them to do what they do? How are algorithms enlisted as part of situated practices, and how do they operate in different setings? How can we develop a productive and critical inquiry of algorithms without reducing it to a question of humans versus the machine?
Let’s begin a tentative answer with a conceptual understanding of how software induces, augments, supports, and produces sociality. Here, I suggest the concept of programmed sociality as a helpful heuristic device. Through this we might study algorithmic power and politics as emerging through the specific programmed arrangements of social media platforms, and the activities that are allowed to take place within those arrangements. Facebook and other software systems support and shape sociality in ways that are specific to the architecture and material substrate of the medium in question. To do justice to the concept of programmed sociality, it is important to highlight that it does not lead us down a pathway of technological determinism. In using the term “programmed,” I draw on computer scientist John von Neumann’s notion of “program,” for which the term “to program” means to “assemble” and to “organize” (Grier, 1996: 52). This is crucial, as it frames software and algorithms as dynamic and performative rather than as fixed and static entities. Regarding “sociality,” I refer to the concept of how diferent actors belong together and relate to each other. That is, sociality implies the ways in which entities (both human and non-human) are associated and gathered together, enabling interaction between the entities concerned (Latour, 2005). To be concerned with programmed sociality is to be interested in how actors are articulated in and through computational means of assembling and organizing, which always already embody certain norms and values about the social world. To exemplify how algorithmic media prescribe certain norms, values, and practices, let me describe how programmed sociality plays out in the specific context of Facebook, by focusing on friendships as a particularly pertinent form of being together online.
As Facebook has become an integral part of everyday life, providing a venue for friendships to unfold and be maintained, it is easy to forget just how involved Facebook is in what we often just take to be interpersonal relationships. Everything from seting up a profile and connecting with other users to maintaining a network of friends entails an intimate relation with the software underlying the platform itself. As van Dijck has pointed out, “what is important to understand about social network sites is how they activate relational impulses” (2012: 161). It is important to understand that relationships are activated online, but also how and when they are activated: by whom, for what purpose, and according to which mechanisms.
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