{"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":87,"pdf_page":97,"physical_index":97,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"f8ad62e07cbfc4adcf404a7a0140fb2489873c1552b7b33e75981b2721cac50f"},"chapter":"IF...THEN","content":"Algorithms are fundamentally relational in the sense that they depend on some kind of external input (data) in order to function. Algorithms do not just represent a rigid, preprogrammed structure, understood as “recipes or sets of steps expressed in flowcharts, code or pseudocode” (Mackenzie,  2006: 43). They are also fluid, adaptable, and mutable. This means that the Facebook algorithm is not something that merely acts upon users from above. The power of the Facebook algorithm arises instead from its interrelationships with users. For example, as exemplified in the “News Feed FYI” blog series, “People who tend to watch more video in news feed  should expect to see more videos near the top of their Feed” (Welch and Zhang, 2014). Not only is there an obvious circularity to this logic of showing more or the same, the agency of algorithms—their capacity for action—is ultimately put into the hands of users. How Facebook’s news feed algorithm will process the data that I provide, therefore, also depends fundamentally on me as well as my relationships with my “friends.” This is also the principle of machine learning, the ethos of contemporary computational culture. For instance, top news dynamically updates, depending on how many times I visit Facebook, which makes it dificult to make a general claim about the percentage of stories making it to the top news. On a random day in September 2011, I compared the same top news feed before and after checking the most recent feed, which at that time counted over 300 new posts.20 What I found was a change of about 34% in stories displayed between the two instances of checking top news.21 After I checked the most-recent feed, 16 of the 47 posts in the top news feed had immediately changed. The quite noticeable change in stories displayed can be explained by referring back to the workings of the Facebook algorithm. In the first round of checking my top news, the algorithm seemed to put more emphasis on the “time decay” mechanism, since I knew that it had been a while since I had last logged onto Facebook. After checking the most recent feed, however, Facebook “knew” I was “up to date” again, replacing 16 of the previous posts with ones that the system had apparently calculated to be of greater “interest” to me. All 16 new stories displayed in the second round of checking had been posted between 12 and 23 hours after the time of checking and were either of the “communication story” type or stories that had generated a good number of likes and comments. In addition to the frequency with which users check their Facebook, time spent also plays a role. This is to say that the dynamically changing feed also takes into account how long users spend engaging with the stories, not merely how often they check them. While the algorithmic architecture works dynamically, thereby making analysis of its workings dificult, we can treat them as a particular way of framing the environments upon which they work (Mackenzie, 2007). We may say that Facebook’s news feed algorithm, acting as a gatekeeper of user-generated content, demarcates visibility as something that cannot be taken for granted. The uncertainty connected to the level of visibility and constant possibility of “disappearing” in relation to the “variable ontology” of software frames visibility as something exclusive. Becoming visible on the news feed is, thus, constructed as something to which to aspire rather than to feel threatened by.\n\nLife at the Top\n\n87","previous_page":86,"next_page":88}