Algorithms as Culture

Organisation | University of Salzburg, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
My Role | Researcher, Author

In what ways do algorithmic systems rearrange or resemble cultural systems?

This is a summary. Download the published paper here.

Note: An early version of this paper was written as part of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master’s Degree in Digital Communication Leadership (delivered by the Paris Lodron University of Salzburg, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and UCLA California).

Background.

Algorithms have come to play a defining role in how we choose the music to which we listen, the movies we watch, the books we read and even the romantic relationships we pursue. Algorithms also influence our financial investments, track our weight, analyse our health and even calibrate our sleep habits to nudge us towards ‘healthier’ ways of living. In effect, algorithms hijack the role of journalists, curators, sorters, moderators, matchmakers, censors, mathematical modellers, measurers and even fetishists of the private human experience.

As the work of algorithms is cultural, and algorithms are not free of culture themselves (cf. Gillespie 2016), and they guide, affect and shape almost any choice that we make, which is to say they have taken over the task of reassembling the social (cf. Latour 2005).  Such a shift alters how culture is practised, experienced and understood, giving rise to what Galloway terms “algorithmic culture” (2006). These systems shape cultural encounters and cultural landscapes, deeply and pervasively restructuring the human experience. They also often act and make taste visible. The question this creates is about the power of algorithms in culture and, more specifically, the power of algorithms in the formation of tastes and preferences. 

However, this form of modern mythmaking around algorithms sidesteps deeper critical examinations into the everyday workings of their power. What we generally lack as a public is clarity about how algorithms exercise their power over us.

Therefore, my research goal is to synthesize, critique and extend these studies as a means to situate the changing, performative nature of algorithms within the context of their socio-technical assemblage.

Aims.

Published in the academic journal kommunikation.medien (curated by the University of Salzburg), the article provides a critical introduction to the conceptual and socio-technical development of algorithms ‘as’ culture and, thereby, offers a preliminary discourse on what it constitutes. It identifies central issues that inform and structure current debates as well as the reassembling of culture spurred by algorithms.

Structure.

  • The first section highlights the shift in how culture is practiced, experienced and understood in a computationally rich world.

  • The second section connects these issues to the most influential texts and discussions on algorithmic culture.

  • This final section summarises theoretical innovations triggered by this situation: the rise of algorithmic studies, the mediatisation effects of algorithms and the closed commercial loop of algorithmic communications in the cultural sphere.

The idea of algorithms as culturally meaningful objects is also an attempt to liberate the scholarship on algorithms from dominant, overused terms, such as black box, and instead, examine them through the lens of culture (and the context in which culture is developed).

By building a conceptual framework of algorithms as culture, my larger aim is to contribute to a research discourse at the intersection of critical algorithm studies and cultural anthropology, i.e., the manifestation of algorithmic systems as cultural systems.

Conclusions.

I conclude that what we are primarily contending with when it comes to algorithmic culture is the privatisation of cultural decision-making, that is, the forms of decision-making and contestation that comprise the ongoing struggle to determine the values, practices and artefacts – the culture, as it were – of specific social groups and, therefore, society at large.

To this end, I have also demonstrated that algorithmic cultures function as a marker to locate the ways in which we orchestrate our lives with (and through) algorithms. On the one hand, we are already habituated with making ourselves algorithm-recognisable, but, on the other hand, the extent to which we live in an algorithmic world needs to be reassessed.

Future research could examine not only the degrees to which algorithms rearrange or resemble culture, but also what it would mean to actively resist them.

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