Under conditions of so-called “Platform Capitalism”, software and algorithms undertake the important task of designing the interaction amongst online users and establishing criteria of relevance for ...content. As such, they operate as curatorial agents of platforms’ content, establishing what is there to see, know and consume. This state of affairs calls for a revision of the traditional role of the (human) curator who is confronted with an online environment characterised by the unprecedented collision of commercial, aesthetic, cultural and political interests. The question of what kind of relationship the curator shall create with the algorithm then becomes crucial: is this a relationship of antagonism, resistance or alliance? How do these two curatorial agents influence each other? In this article, I analyse a cluster of hybrid artistic and curatorial experiments (including my own curatorial work) that foregrounds online platforms as discrete modes of socio-technical assemblages that curate particular forms of connectivity amongst networks of users, data layers and technical infrastructures. By doing so, I argue for the forging of strategic alliances between human and machinic curators as a strategy to channel new forms of creativity and cooperation under conditions of “Platform Capitalism” and to operationalise human-algorithmic curation as a political and aesthetic practice within the networked culture.
In this article, we discuss the ethical issues raised by large-scale online social experiments using the controversy surrounding the so-called Facebook emotional contagion study as our prime example ...(Kramer, Guillory, & Hancock, 2014). We describe how different parties approach the issues raised by the study and which aspects they highlight, discerning how data science advocates and data science critics use different sets of analogies to strategically support their claims. Through a qualitative and non-representative discourse analysis we find that proponents weigh the arguments for and against online social experiments with each other, while critics question the legitimacy of the implicit assignment of different roles to scientists and subjects in such studies. We conclude that rather than the effects of the research itself, the asymmetrical nature of the relationship between these actors and the present status of data science as a (to the wider public) black box is at the heart of the controversy that followed the Facebook study, and that this perceived asymmetry is likely to lead to future conflicts.
Self-presentation is a process that is significantly complicated by the rise of algorithmic social media feeds, which obscure information about one's audience and environment. User understandings of ...these systems, and therefore user ability to adapt to them, are limited, and have recently been explored through the lens of folk theories. To date, little is understood of how these theories are formed, and how they tie to the self-presentation process in social media. This paper presents an exploratory look at the folk theory formation process and the interplay between folk theories and self-presentation via a 28-participant interview study. Results suggest that people draw from diverse sources of information when forming folk theories, and that folk theories are more complex, multifaceted and malleable than previously assumed. This highlights the need to integrate folk theories into both social media systems and theories of self-presentation.
Explaining the News Feed Algorithm Cotter, Kelley; Cho, Janghee; Rader, Emilee
Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems,
05/2017
Conference Proceeding
Facebook uses algorithmic curation---automated selection and ranking of content---to present a personalized News Feed to each user for consumption. However, the News Feed user interface provides ...little information to help users understand how the ranking algorithm works. We analyzed the company's "News Feed FYI' blog series to better understand the degree to which Facebook employs "how'and "why' explanations of its News Feed algorithm. These types of explanations have been used in other recommendation and intelligent systems as a means of promoting user understanding and acceptance. Our findings show that the "News Feed" FYI' blog posts focus more on explanations that justify why the algorithm works the way it does, and less on explanations that describe how the system works. These findings suggest that the "News Feed" FYI' series would be more helpful for increasing users' confidence in the system, but not improving their trust in the system.
The consumption of music is increasingly reliant on the personalisation, recommendation, and automated curation features of music streaming services. Using algorithm experience (AX) as a lens, we ...investigated the user experience of the algorithmic recommendation and automated curation features of several popular music streaming services. We conducted interviews and participant-observation with 15 daily users of music streaming services, followed by a design workshop. We found that despite the utility of increasingly algorithmic personalisation, listeners experienced these algorithmic and recommendation features as impersonal in determining their background listening, music discovery, and playlist curation. While listener desire for more control over recommendation settings is not new, we offer a number of novel insights about music listening to nuance this understanding, particularly through the notion of vibe.
In this doctoral research program, the influence of algorithms on creative perception and construction is investigated. First, I outline the need for a clear framework that aims to measure ...viewer-defined online creativity. To meet this need, I offer a 5-part mixed methods approach that synthesizes qualitative, quantitative, and visual data to construct a conception of online visual creativity. Then, I discuss applications of this framework to measure the impact of emerging technologies on human creativity. In a second study, I demonstrate the influence of TikTok's algorithm on the content being filmed by its users; in particular, I investigate the Duet feature as a site of remixing rather than creatively collaborating. In sum, algorithms are shown to influence creative consumers by both curating the content that one is exposed to and by guiding the content that is initially created. Next steps for my dissertation work are also discussed.
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