{"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":158,"pdf_page":168,"physical_index":168,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"72be03c6319c21edbc54592a414169388063e2d3ac6f32a2567ecc9212351a7c"},"chapter":"IF...THEN","content":"Clearly, the question of what counts as an algorithm is highly site-specific, and even when algorithms are assumed they may count diferently. In terms of professional practice the interviews presented in chapter 6 reveal the extent to which algorithms perpetuate designer’s values, beliefs, and assumptions. I also showed that they reflect the diferent institutional and organizational setings in which algorithms linger. News media professionals frequently contrast the “good” journalistic algorithm to the “inferior” algorithms of social media platforms. News editors and managers speak of the importance of coding the “right” journalistic values into systems, equating the “bad” algorithm with systems that merely give people more of what they already had. While it might be tempting to take sides, to say that one algorithmic system is beter than the other, we must also be wary not just of the politics embedded in design but the politics of making boundaries. As was suggested in chapter  6, what constitutes a “problematic algorithm” in one seting (i.e., the Facebook algorithm challenging the livelihood of journalism), may simply be rendered unproblematic and desirable in another (i.e., Facebook itself touting the algorithms as merely helping people get closer to their friends). Problematic values in design aside, it is also important to point out that there are no “innocent” ways of knowing or talking about algorithms.\n\nReturning to what was the starting point of the book, we are now in a beter position to think through some of the more general claims that were made at the outset. The question was raised as to how algorithms are shaping the conditions of everyday life. One answer is that the materiality of algorithms, the values and assumptions designed into the technological properties of algorithmic systems, govern sociality in specific ways. A claim was made to the efect that algorithms “program” ways of being together, producing the conditions through which people come to speak and connect online. Now we are hopefully in a beter position to see how questioning the ways in which algorithms shape life also requires us to question how life shapes algorithms. Through the continuous collection of user data, algorithmic systems reach a higher level of flexibility and responsiveness: The relations between self and others change continuously. What I want to suggest, then, is that the notion of programmed sociality at play in the algorithmic media landscape is one where what’s at stake are the ongoing actualization of “becoming together” in ways that temporarily stabilize, rather than a result of pre-programmed forms of being. The way we are together can only be thought of in terms of becoming, where the “we” implied by sociality is never confined to any specifies or essence, but to the “we” as relation.\n\n158\n\nI F . . . T H E N","previous_page":157,"next_page":159}