Algorithmic Politics and Activism Notes
Introduction to Algorithmic Politics
- Social movement activist filming a police officer highlights contemporary algorithmic politics.
- Police officer uses a pop song to trigger copyright protection algorithm, preventing filming.
- Political practices increasingly occur on algorithmically mediated environments.
- Political actors appropriate algorithms to fulfill objectives.
- Digital platforms reshape how political actors generate and share information.
The Quest for Visibility
- Algorithmic politics centers on visibility: gaining it or preventing others from doing so.
- Technopolitical battleground: actors use algorithms for control/surveillance or emancipatory aims.
- Platforms moderate and control political information flow.
Algorithmic Politics in Data Politics
- Algorithmic politics is located within data politics.
- Distinction between institutional/strategic and contentious/tactical algorithmic politics.
- Taxonomy: amplification, evasion, and hijacking.
- Discussion of the moral economy of algorithmic activism.
- Connections and differences with hashtag activism and addressing the agnosticism of algorithmic activism.
The Emergence of Algorithmic Politics
- Data shapes societal relations and has implications for politics and democratic life.
- Data creates new power relations.
- Data politics involves conditions of possibility of data, language, and people, creating new worlds.
- Political questions about these worlds provoke subjects to govern themselves and others.
- Data politics involves struggles around data collection and new forms of power relations.
Institutional vs. Contentious Data Politics
- Institutional politics of data: Top-down effects of datafication.
- Contentious politics of data: Bottom-up practices that interfere with datafication.
- Contesting power relations and reappropriating data practices.
Algorithmic Politics Defined
- Algorithmic politics: How groups exercise algorithmic agency to fulfill political objectives.
- Institutional algorithmic politics: Efforts from above (state, institution, corporation).
- Contentious algorithmic politics: Practices initiated from below (collectives, social movements).
Connections to Existing Literature
- Institutional algorithmic politics: Computational propaganda, algorithmic populism.
- Contentious algorithmic politics: Algorithmic resistance, algorithmic activism.
- Analysis based on de Certeau’s strategic and tactical dimensions.
Institutional and Strategic Algorithmic Politics
- Digital platforms play a central role in disseminating political voices.
- Disinformation and hate have proliferated on social media.
- Key events: Wikileaks, Cambridge Analytica, Brexit, Trump election, COVID-19 infodemic.