{"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":120,"pdf_page":130,"physical_index":130,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"02cdcc1a9d63ead9795d4be9e5a4c603fdd1d287341708d58d063bc0834a54e4"},"chapter":"IF...THEN","content":"As we will see, the news industry constitutes a place in which the emergence of computation, machine learning, and data science have wide-reaching and persistent consequences. Although computerization has long been part of the news industry, the use of algorithms as an integral part of news work is a relatively recent phenomenon in this context. As I claimed in chapter 2, algorithms do not exist in a vacuum. Nor can their power and politics simply be framed in a top-down manner, for example, as something exercising power over another actor or object. Algorithms are always built and embedded into the lived world, at the level of institutional practice, individual behavior, and human experience. In chapters 2 and 3 I referred to the notion of ontological politics to denote how reality is never a given, but rather shaped and emerging through particular interactions. The purpose of this chapter is to provide more empirical evidence for the claim that algorithms are imbued with such ontological politics.\n\nSo far in this book, I have shown that algorithms mater in a variety of ways: in their capacity to govern participation on platforms, distribute information flow, embed values in design, reflect existing societal biases and help reinforce them by means of automation and feedback loops, and in their powers to make people feel and act in specific ways. As I have argued throughout, understanding the ontological politics of algorithms cannot simply be done by looking at the materiality of code, as if formulas have a deterministic force or causal relationship to what they are supposed to compute. Regarding the notion that we need to take materiality of technology seriously, I already take this for granted.2 While algorithms can be said to possess what Jane Bennet calls “thing-power” (2004: 348), a capacity to assert themselves that cannot be reduced to human subjectivity, here I want to focus on the specific circumstances of their material-discursive enactment—or matering— in the context of the news industry.\n\nHow exactly are algorithms enacted to shape the realities of contemporary journalism, and when do algorithms come to mater in the first place? To speak of mater, “matering” (Law, 2004b) and “material-discursive practices” (Barad, 2003; Orlikowski & Scot, 2015) is to be interested in the ways in which algorithms are materialized in diferent manners, made out and carved into existence at the intersection of technology, institutional practice, and discourse. Drawing on the process-relational framework that was introduced in chapter 3, what I am interested in here are the processes through which algorithms are demarcated as an entity and made separate from other things. What an algorithm does and the impact it may have is not tied to its materiality alone, but also to the ways in which it enters discursively into accounts, and makes things happen as part of situated practices. This eventfulness of algorithms is thus inextricably linked to the question of when algorithms mater, understood as the ways in which the algorithm emerges as objects of knowledge and concern, defining and being defined by those who are touched by it. Mater and matering are key terms in this regard, describing an ongoing process of becoming, whereby diferent actors and elements are brought together and aligned in ways that shape certain realities (Barad, 2003; Mol, 2002). To understand the realities that have allowed controversies surrounding “fake news,” Facebook’s trending topic, and its censorship of an iconic photograph to flourish, we need to first understand how algorithms come to mater at the intersection of journalism, social media platforms, and institutional practice. When, then, do algorithms mater and whom do they mater for?\n\n120\n\nI F . . . T H E N","previous_page":119,"next_page":121}