Power through the algorithm? Participatory web cultures and the technological unconscious

By David Beer. New Media & Society, 2009

695 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Communication, Information Systems, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e32d35fffa9a4f402c43293d193537ee30f07ef1

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Citations in the corpus

Reassembling Social Science Methods: The Challenge of Digital Devices (2013, methodology): “There are also numerous digital devices produced by software developers for tracing and visualising data that is circulated on the world wide web such as Google’s PageRank, Technorati’s blog post aggregator, or the Lexis Nexis media aggregator (Beer 2009).”
The like economy: Social buttons and the data-intensive web (2013, background): “Hence, the social web is defined by the participatory and collaborative production of content, its crosssyndication (Beer, 2009) and the relations created between users and multiple web objects – pictures, status updates or pages (Appelquist et al.”
We get the algorithms of our ground truths: Designing referential databases in digital image processing (2017, background): “of studies: the first series of studies presents algorithms as powerful value-laden actors (Beer, 2009; Bucher, 2012; Gillespie, 2014; Hallinan and Striphas, 2016; Introna and Nissenbaum, 2000; Introna and Wood, 2004; Kraemer et al., 2011; Kushner, 2013; Steiner, 2012); the”
Big Data from the bottom up (2014, neutral): “As Beer (2009: 999) noted, sociology must also ‘focus . . . on those who engage with the software in their everyday lives’.”
Bearing Account-able Witness to the Ethical Algorithmic System (2016, background): “Hence, we are told that ‘‘algorithms have the capacity to shape social and cultural formations and impact directly on individual lives,’’ (Beer 2009: 994), that ‘‘power is increasingly in the algorithm,’’ (Lash 2007: 71), and that algorithms ‘‘acquire the status of truth . . .”
Sharing the moment as small stories (2019, background): “Such studies attend to the ways in which the engineering of platforms, including filtering and sorting algorithms, functions as a sociotechnical actor, capable of influencing users’ experiences and communication online (Beer 2009).”
Health promotion in the digital era: a critical commentary. (2015, background): “Despite the rhetoric of participatory democracy and sharing that characterizes much discussion of Web 2.0 technologies such as social media sites (Beer, 2009), these media are not the open, collaborative spaces that they once were as they have become commodified and bent to commercial interests.”
The Platformization of the Web: Making Web Data Platform Ready (2015, background): “So, while the original definition of Web 2.0 implied making use of the web as a computational platform, it would be embodied in a more metaphorical sense (cf. Gillespie, 2010), as a platform for participation with the associated rhetoric of “empowerment” and “democratization” (Beer, 2009, p. 986).”
Playing the visibility game: How digital influencers and algorithms negotiate influence on Instagram (2018, background): “Even so, algorithms play an important role in structuring our online experiences (Beer, 2009; Bucher, 2012; Cheney-Lippold, 2011; Gillespie, 2014).”
What is a flag for? Social media reporting tools and the vocabulary of complaint (2016, methodology): “Engagement with complaints, and the user communities from which they come, is mediated and modulated by the procedures instantiated in the flag interface and the algorithms behind it (Beer, 2009; Malaby, 2006).”
The Relevance of Algorithms (2013, background): “…é acionado, o que requer tanto o conhecimento coletado naquele momento, quanto o conhecimento já acumulado sobre o usuário e sobre outros usuários considerados parecidos com ele em termos estatísticos e demográficos (BEER, 2009) - unindo o que Stalder e Mayer (2009) chamam de “segundo índice”.”
'You have one identity': performing the self on Facebook and LinkedIn (2013, methodology): “However, algorithms, as coded quantifications of sociality, are implemented to trigger as many connections as possible, even though users are still often unaware of the effects they have upon them (Beer, 2008, 2009).”
A Qualitative Exploration of Perceptions of Algorithmic Fairness (2018, background): “…towards the latter, and of particular relevance to our investigation is the perspective taken in critical algorithm studies, which articulates the increasing influence of algorithms in society and largely focuses on understanding algorithms as an object of social concern [6,17,38,54,55,63,76,79].”
Automated Media: An Institutional Theory Perspective on Algorithmic Media Production and Consumption (2014, background): “In a similar vein, Beer (2009) characterizes algorithms as having “the capacity to shape social and cultural formations and impact directly on individual lives” (p.”
On Organizing Algorithms (2015, background): “In recent discussion of algorithms, concerns have been expressed regarding the apparent power, agential capacity and control that algorithms command of our lives (Beer, 2009; Lash, 2007; Slavin, 2011; Spring, 2011; Stalder and Mayer, 2009).”