{"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":148,"pdf_page":158,"physical_index":158,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"e2bf04cbe4d3cf717e53bdecf06f032df7e1ffcfb7eaef6cfbdac0b3612372b5"},"chapter":"IF...THEN","content":"Facebook algorithm” to their advantage, is indicative of the operation of politics. Whether we are speaking of the “internal” algorithm developed inside a specific newsroom or the “external” ones of Facebook, they seem to have the capacity to disturb and to compose new feelings, instincts, and sensibilities. In the hybrid media system where traditional publishers increasingly rely on trafic from social media platforms, people’s engagement with the news is configured by the algorithmic systems of increasingly interdependent, yet professionally and ideologically distinct, information providers. News happens on diferent platforms, it migrates from publishers to social media and back again, and in the process gets caught up in complex sociomaterial dynamics of ranking, sharing, linking, and clicking. It reconfigures how journalism is apprehended, and what counts as news at all. Such is the ontological politics of algorithms, shaped in the encounters and conflicts that make them mater.\n\nThe overarching themes that emerged from the interviews with Scandinavian news media professionals revealed how algorithms are entangled in and emerge as contested maters in various processes of drawing boundaries. That is, algorithms are materialized as they become invested with certain social, political and ethical capacities. A “good algorithm,” for example, is one that reflects the right kind of values—in this case, journalistic values. By the same token, the “bad algorithm” is one that takes no editorial responsibility. But the good and the bad vary too. The “bad” or inferior algorithms of social media become the condition of possibility for the “good” journalistic algorithm. Facebook’s problematic algorithm simultaneously represents an opportunity for news sites. As Aftenposten’s censorship allegations against Facebook in the “Terror of War” case usefully suggests, algorithms are not inherently bad or good, but can be used more or less strategically to make such claims. While the “bad algorithm” of Facebook may instigate worries about declining conditions for democracy, it may also be mobilized as a productive tool insofar as it allows the news media to strengthen their authority as public watchdogs. As media scholar Charlie Becket (2017) provokingly suggests, “fake news” may be the best thing that has happened to journalism in recent years, as it “gives mainstream quality journalism the opportunity to show that it has value based on expertise, ethics, engagement and experience.” Conversely, the journalistic algorithm is manifested as the solution to a problem that social media made more or less conceivable. According to such a view, there is no such thing as a problematic algorithm in and of itself, only algorithms that become problematic as an efect of diferentially atributed forms of agency. With regard to the allegations of the algorithmic propagation of fake news on Facebook and its alleged efects of a misinformed public, it is my claim that any fruitful explanation needs to move beyond the algorithm per se. Although it certainly maters that Facebook’s news feed algorithms are optimized for shares and engagements, how and when it maters may mater even more.\n\n148\n\nI F . . . T H E N","previous_page":147,"next_page":149}