{"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":132,"pdf_page":142,"physical_index":142,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"2f7adb9bd2067635cb5004beddee612d3c299c7217a4e92abaf5c238efa20b6f"},"chapter":"IF...THEN","content":"Yet, algorithms are primarily directed at the consumer, not so much at practitioners, Aske Johan Koppel Stræde, new director of digital development at Politiken says, when I interview him in September 2016. This is where Stræde locates the algorithmic potential, in helping journalists find, contextualize and frame the news in innovative ways. Rather than seting the agenda, algorithms can be used to provide journalists with new tools to “make it easier to set the agenda,” Stræde suggests. Whether these tools mine Twiter for important topics or track what people are talking about on Facebook, algorithms can be used productively to support journalistic practices, many of the informants suggest. During the interviews, I was struck by the way it appeared easier to talk about algorithms in a positive spin when they were invoked as human helpers, rather than as automated gatekeepers of sorts. Understood as less confronting, invoking algorithms as tools for making the editorial workflow more eficient can be a way of saying yes to algorithms without compromising on the democratic function of journalism. As we will see in the next section, the conversations around algorithms tend to shift when they are more directly linked to the values and institutional role of journalism. Journalists often see themselves as using algorithms to serve publics with beter news, and the managers tend to defend this public function of journalism as well.\n\nWhile algorithms are variously regarded as helpful tools that support news workers in accomplishing their tasks and make the production cycle more eficient, they are not merely supporting journalists but also slowly changing the very condition of news work itself. Algorithms help to make journalism in new ways, by creating new genres, practices, and understandings of what news and news work is, and what they ought to be. As described in the burgeoning literature on digital and algorithmic journalism, algorithms are now used to find relevant stories on social media platforms (Thurman et al., 2016), create catchy headlines (van Dalen, 2012), use data sets to generate stories (Karlsen and Stavelin, 2014), and aggregate and recommend news stories ( Just & Latzer, 2017). In many of the news organizations studied large investments go into experimenting with new computational tools to make news work more efective. At Schibsted, Cramer explains, one problem is that journalists often write in a form that is too long, too complicated, and too intricate without really taking the user’s perspective into consideration (Interview 1, August 2016). There’s potential, as Cramer sees it, in the way algorithms can be used to “atomize” the news. Such an approach, which is also known as “structured journalism,” works by treating every bit of content as a separate block of data that can be reassembled into a new form, depending on what a specific reader already knows.12 As Cramer points out, by simply treating every sentence, word, or paragraph as a separate “atom,” newsrooms may use the power of algorithms and databases to produce news stories “on the go” and avoid unnecessary overlaps. Perhaps it is time to rethink the genre of the traditional news article itself, Cramer speculates, referring to a study conducted by Norway’s leading tabloid and most read newspaper VG, which showed an overwhelming overlap in content produced between their journalists on a daily basis. More than simply writing articles like journalists have always done, atomizing the news essentially implies a personalization of the storytelling process itself, a process that is fundamentally powered by algorithms and structured data. For Sundve, whose rhetorical mission at Schibsted seems in part to be about establishing “the true purpose of journalism” vis-à-vis technology companies, atomization, however, represents much more than a new computational technique. In the ongoing batle for atention, revenue, and control over informational flows, content is king. If what social media platforms do is merely to distribute content, creating original and personal content may just be the news media industry’s “greatest weapon in the fight for relevance” (Sundve, 2017). More important, perhaps, is the editorial accountability that comes with creating journalistic content. In order to succeed in keeping a distinct and accountable editorial voice, Sundve thinks it is crucial to develop new ways in which algorithms and people work together (Interview 7, May 2016).\n\n132\n\nI F . . . T H E N","previous_page":131,"next_page":133}