{"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":68,"pdf_page":78,"physical_index":78,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"1c4917a4e53ef892dca55cd3143b9cbbbb12349a15654557537f5ea9bf200dd0"},"chapter":"IF...THEN","content":"Building on a Foucauldian sensibility toward the “microphysics of power” the question is not whom power most obviously belongs or where it is located but how and when power is exercised: those algorithmic techniques and practices that animate it and give it efect.\n\nBefore I get to a more detailed examination of the news feed, it is important to acknowledge that “there is an undeniable cultural dimension to computation” (Berry, 2011: 17). Software, code, and algorithms, while mathematical, logical, and mechanical in their materiality, are always made, maintained, and unmade. As computer historian Michael Mahoney says, software is always “constructed with action in mind; the programmer aims to make something happen” (1988: 121). As I discussed in the previous chapter, it can be dificult to study what actions programmers have in mind when the object of study is a commercial social media platform such as Facebook, since the motivations and intentions of software engineers often remain as obscure as the companies they work for. While cultural anthropologist Nick Seaver is right to criticize the tendency among media scholars to focus on figuring out the technical details of popular platforms at the expense of trying to figure out what their engineers think and do, access to the interiors of many of these companies for most researchers remains closed. Whether the scant literature in social media production studies is a result of closed access or merely a disproportionate interest in the study of users and consumption practices is not clear. As Nick Couldry has pointed out with regards to cultural and media studies, “production is often downplayed because it is not regarded as a place where everyday practice can be found” (quoted in Mackenzie, 2006: 14). While this may be true of much previous social media research, a notable exception is Alice Marwick’s ethnography of the Silicon Valley social media “technology scene.” In her book Status Update (2013), Marwick shows how software can embody the values of a group of users or creators—specifically, how software features may reflect the technology scene’s cultural beliefs about how the world is ordered and organized.\n\nFrom a “values in design” perspective (Flanagan and Nissenbaum, 2014), the cultural beliefs and values held by programmers, designers, and creators of software mater. If we want to understand how software and algorithms are imbued in the fabric of everyday life, acknowledging and taking seriously the notion that these artefacts are far from neutral is imperative. By way of introducing the reader to Facebook and situating the object of analysis discussed in this chapter—the news feed—I first turn to the culture of engineering at Facebook. I show how materiality and culture are not separate but inherently entangled. While subscribing to the view that technology and practices need to be seen as co-constitutive, the emphasis in this chapter is on the material side of the sociotechnical framework.2 This should not be taken as a statement about cause and efect. Rather, it is about acknowledging that, despite purporting a relational view on the social and material, scholarship tends to “lean” toward one side or the other for analytical and empirical purposes. While the next two chapters “lean” toward the social side in terms of looking at social media users and news practitioners’ oral histories respectively, this chapter leans toward diferent aspects of materiality—to spaces and technology. Next, I draw on Michel Foucault’s architectural diagram of power introduced in Discipline and Punish (1977) to establish an analytical framework through which the news feed can be understood as an example of how sociality is programmed in algorithmic media.\n\n68\n\nI F . . . T H E N","previous_page":67,"next_page":69}