{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","title":"If...Then Algorithmic Power and Politics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"2017054909","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","id":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","uuid":"1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","title":"If...Then Algorithmic Power and Politics","normalized_title":"ifthenalgorithmicpowerandpolitics","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"2017054909","isbns":["2017054909","9780190493042","9780190493059"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":211,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/If...Then%20Algorithmic%20Power%20and%20Politics","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/1d3bd28e-c1ba-4af2-8580-60b32ef26053/search"},"page":{"printed_page":100,"pdf_page":110,"physical_index":110,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"4f4f5404209c881e707f43cf5fe44a9c99796a16e50ae3d8211f29c3f432e762"},"chapter":"IF...THEN","content":"The answers were first coded for information about the kinds of situations and circumstances that provided the informants a “reason to react.” As feminist philosopher Sara Ahmed suggests of strange encounters, “To be afected by something is to evaluate that thing. Evaluations are expressed in how bodies turn towards things. To give value to things is to shape what is near us” (Ahmed, 2010: 31). This became clear in the process of coding the interviews and email transcripts as well. Thus, in a second iteration of coding, all transcripts were analyzed in terms of how they were either explicitly or implicitly evaluating and making sense of the algorithms, the extent to which their awareness of the algorithm afected their use of the platforms in question, what kinds of tactics and strategies they developed in response to the algorithm (if any), and the kinds of issues and concerns they voiced about the algorithms. While these transcripts would not stand up in a court of law, they should be seen as records of happenings that are “difuse yet palpable gatherings of force becoming sensed in scenes of the ordinary” (McCormack, 2015: 97). What is of importance, then, is not whether the stories that people tell are representative of how algorithms “really are” (if that is even possible). Instead, personal algorithm stories may atest to the ideas and perceptions people have about what algorithms are and how they function and, perhaps more importantly, their imaginings about what algorithms should be and the expectations that people form about them.\n\nLiving with Algorithms\n\nPeople encounter algorithms in all kinds of situations: a recently purchased Christmas gift that appears on the shared family computer as an ad (ruining the surprise), weird recommendations, the almost-forgoten friend who suddenly reappears on the Facebook news feed after years of silence. Although the people I talked to for this chapter claimed to have varying degrees of knowledge about algorithms, a few themes emerged as to when and how algorithms came to mater—here, presented under a few subheadings paraphrased from participants’ responses: “People aren’t a math problem” describes the diferent kinds of confounding connections that algorithms seem to be generative of. Whether these connections come across as surprising, uncanny, funny, or bewildering, what unites them is that they do not feel inconsequential to the people afected by them. “Enter the popularity contest” is about the ways in which algorithms become arbiters of diference by “Distributing the sensible” (Ranciere,  2004), demarcating the regimes of visibility in terms of who or what becomes visible. Related to the first theme concerning how algorithms shape the ways in which identity is constituted and experienced, the notion of the popularity contest articulates the ways in which people become aware of and evaluate algorithms based on their capacity to filter content in diferent ways. Finally, “Clicking consciously” addresses how algorithms or, more precisely, beliefs about how algorithms work trigger particular responses and ways of being on social media platforms. People develop various strategies and tactics to make themselves “algorithmically recognizable” (Gillespie, 2016) or unrecognizable for that mater. What the data reveal is how being afected by algorithms is not simply a mater of passive observation or subtle awareness but of actionable consequences and movement, of reaction and creativity.\n\n100\n\nI F . . . T H E N","previous_page":99,"next_page":101}