Social Media Collective
Critical Algorithm Studies: a
Reading List
This list is an attempt to collect and categorize a growing critical
literature on algorithms as social concerns. The work included spans
sociology, anthropology, science and technology studies, geography,
communication, media studies, and legal studies, among others. Our
interest in assembling this list was to catalog the emergence of
“algorithms” as objects of interest for disciplines beyond mathematics,
computer science, and software engineering.
As a result, our list does not contain much writing by computer
scientists, nor does it cover potentially relevant work on topics such as
quantification, rationalization, automation, software more generally, or
big data, although these interests are well-represented in these works’
reference sections of the essays themselves.
This area is growing in size and popularity so quickly that many
contributions are popping up without reference to work from
disciplinary neighbors. One goal for this list is to help nascent scholars
of algorithms to identify broader conversations across disciplines and to
avoid reinventing the wheel or falling into analytic traps that other
scholars have already identified. We also thought it would be useful,
especially for those teaching these materials, to try to loosely categorize
it. The organization of the list is meant merely as a first-pass,
provisional sense-making effort. Within categories the entries are
offered in chronological order, to help make sense of these rapid
developments.
In light of all of those limitations, we encourage you to see it as an
unfinished document, and we welcome comments. These could be
recommendations of other work to include, suggestions on how to
reclassify a particular entry, or ideas for reorganizing the categories
themselves. Please use the comment space at the bottom of the page to
offer suggestions and criticism; we will try to update the list in light of
these suggestions.
This list is also available as a VISUAL TIMELINE
([Link] and a public
ZOTERO LIBRARY
([Link]
Tarleton Gillespie and Nick Seaver
last updated: 12.15.16
0. overviews
0.1 technical and philosophical precursors / emic “what are
algorithms?” essays
0.2 field surveys / keywords / initial provocations
0.3 books about algorithms addressed to broader audiences
0.4 conferences focused on algorithms and society
0.5 lists of algorithm studies resources
0.6 syllabi that focus on algorithms and society
1. the specific implications of algorithms and the choices they make
1.1 algorithms have embedded values / biases, lead to
personalization / social sorting / discrimination
1.2 with algorithms come rationalization / automation /
quantification, and the erasure of human judgment / complexity /
context
1.3 questions of accountability and policy responses around
algorithms
2. algorithms fit with, and help advance, specific ideological
worldviews
3. algorithms are complex technical assemblages, that have to be
mapped
4. algorithms aren’t just technical artifacts, they’re fundamentally
human in their design and their use
4.1 people design and maintain algorithms, in specific ways, and
that matters
4.2 people work, play, and live with algorithms, in specific ways,
and that matters
4.3 what do users understand about algorithms
4.4 the discursive production of algorithms to shape their public
perception
5. methods and approaches for studying algorithmic systems
0. overviews
0.1 technical and philosophical precursors / emic “what are
algorithms?” essays
Wangsness, T. and J. Franklin. 1966. “Algorithm” and “formula.”
Communications of the ACM 9(4), 243.
[Link]
([Link]
Weizenbaum, Joseph. 1976. Computer power and human reason: From
Judgment to Calculation. New York: W. H. Freeman &
Co. [Link]
Computer-Power-and-Human-Reason-From-Judgement-to-Calculation-
1976
Kowalski, Robert. 1979. “Algorithm = Logic + Control.” Communications
of the ACM 22(7): 424-436.
[Link]
[Link]
([Link]
[Link])
Hooker, J.N. 1994. “Needed: An Empirical Science of Algorithms.”
Operations Research 42(2): 201-212.
[Link]
([Link]
Moschovakis, Yiannis N. 2001. “What is an algorithm?” In Mathematics
Unlimited — 2001 and beyond. Edited by B. Engquist and W. Schmid.
Springer: 919-936. [Link]
([Link]
Blass, Andreas and Gurevich, Yuri. 2003. “Algorithms: A quest for
absolute definitions.” Bulletin of European Association for Theoretical
Computer Science 81. [Link]
us/um/people/gurevich/Opera/[Link]
([Link]
us/um/people/gurevich/Opera/[Link])
Gurevich, Yuri. 2014. “What is an Algorithm? (revised)” In Church’s
Thesis: Logic, Mind and Nature (eds. A. Olszewski et al.) Copernicus
Center Press. [Link]
us/um/people/gurevich/Opera/[Link]
([Link]
us/um/people/gurevich/Opera/[Link])
Bullynck, Maarten. 2016. “Histories of algorithms: Past, present and
future.” Historia Mathematica, 43(3), 332–
341. [Link]
0.2 field surveys / keywords / initial provocations
Goffey, Andrew. 2008. “Algorithm.” In Software Studies: A Lexicon,
edited by Matthew Fuller. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Seaver, Nick. 2013. “Knowing Algorithms.” In Media in Transition 8.
Cambridge, MA. [Link]
([Link]
Barocas, Solon, Sophie Hood, and Malte Ziewitz. 2013. “Governing
Algorithms: A Provocation Piece.”
[Link]
([Link]
Gillespie, Tarleton. 2014. “The Relevance of Algorithms.” In Media
Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society, edited by
Tarleton Gillespie, Pablo Boczkowski, and Kirsten Foot, 167-194.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Link]
relevance-of-algorithms/ ([Link]
relevance-of-algorithms/) (draft first published 2012)
Mahnke, Martina and Emma Uprichard. 2014 “Algorithming the
Algorithm.” In Society of the Query Reader: Reflections on Web Search. René
König and Miriam Rasch, eds. Amsterdam: Institute of Network
Cultures. [Link]
content/uploads/sites/4/2014/06/19.Mahnke_Uprichard.pdf
([Link]
content/uploads/sites/4/2014/06/19.Mahnke_Uprichard.pdf)
Pasquale, Frank. 2015. The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That
Control Money and Information. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Striphas, Ted. 2015. “Algorithmic Culture.” European Journal of Cultural
Studies 18(4-5): 395-412. [Link]
5/[Link] ([Link]
Ziewitz, Malte. 2016. “Governing Algorithms: Myth, Mess, and
Methods.” Science, Technology & Human Values. 41(1): 3-16.
[Link]
ract
([Link]
tract)
Gillespie, Tarleton. 2016. “Algorithm.” In Digital Keywords: A Vocabulary
of Information Society and Culture, edited by Ben Peters. Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press. [Link]
algorithm/ ([Link]
Kitchin, Rob. 2017. “Thinking Critically about and Researching
Algorithms.” Information, Communication and Society, 20(1).
[Link]
bstract
([Link]
bstract)
Beer, David. 2017. “The Social Power of Algorithms.” Information,
Communication & Society, 20(1). forthcoming.
0.3 books about algorithms addressed to broader audiences
Steiner, Christopher. 2013. Automate This: How Algorithms Took Over Our
Markets, Our Jobs, and the World. Portfolio.
Slavin, Kevin. 2011. “How Algorithms Shape Our World.” TedGlobal
2011
[Link]
orld
([Link]
world)
MacCormick, John, and Chris Bishop. 2013. Nine Algorithms That
Changed the Future: The Ingenious Ideas That Drive Today’s Computers.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Cormen, Thomas H. 2013. Algorithms Unlocked. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
Dormehl, Luke. 2014. The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our
Problems… and Create More. New York, New York: Perigee Books.
Carr, Nicholas. 2015. The Glass Cage: How Our Computers Are Changing
Us. W. W. Norton & Company.
Domingos, Pedro. 2015. The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the
Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World. New York: Basic
Books.
0.4 conferences focused on algorithms and society
“Society of the Query #1” (INC, Amsterdam) November 2012
[Link]
([Link]
“Society of the Query #2” (INC, Amsterdam) November 2013
[Link] ([Link]
“Governing Algorithms” (NYU) May 2013
[Link] ([Link]
“The Contours of Algorithmic Life” (UC Davis) May 2014
[Link]
([Link]
“Algorithmic Cultures” (Univ. of Konstanz) June 2014
[Link]
([Link]
“Algorithms and Accountability” (NYU) February 2015
[Link]
([Link]
“Disciplines, Technologies, and Algorithm” (U Chicago) May 2015
[Link]
([Link]
algorithms)
“Algorithmic Regmies and Generative Strategies” (Vienna) December
2015 [Link]
([Link]
“Tyranny of the Algorithm: Predictive Analytics & Human Rights”
(NYU) March 2016 [Link]
institute/conference-2016 ([Link]
institute/conference-2016)
“Unlocking the Black Box” (Yale Law) April 2016
[Link] ([Link]
“Data, Cognition and Intelligent Devices” (Centre for Interdisciplinary
Methodologies, Warwick, UK) April 2016.
[Link]
the-dashboard/conference/
([Link]
the-dashboard/conference/)
“Algorithms in Culture” (UC Berkeley) November
2016. [Link]
0.5 lists of algorithm studies resources
“Governing Algorithms” (NYU) reading list:
[Link]
([Link]
“Algorithm Studies” (UCHRI) literature survey:
[Link]
([Link]
Auditing Algorithms” (ICWSM workshop) background readings:
[Link]
([Link]
“Algorithm characterizations” Wikipedia
[Link]
([Link]
“The Algorithm Studies Network” resources:
[Link]
([Link]
0.6 syllabi that focus on algorithms and society
“Algorithms and Big Data: Methods and Controversies” (Mike Ananny,
USC) [Link]
[Link] ([Link]
[Link])
“Algorithmic Culture” (Christian Sandvig, University of
Michigan) [Link]
[Link]/~csandvig/Algorithmic%20Culture%20–
%20Sandvig%20–%20Draft%[Link] ([Link]
[Link]/~csandvig/Algorithmic%20Culture%20--
%20Sandvig%20--%20Draft%[Link])
1. the specific implications of algorithms and the choices they make
(politics of artifacts / values in design approach)
1.1 algorithms have embedded values / biases and lead to
personalization / social sorting / discrimination
(concerned about: designer intent vs unaware, how did it get there, where are
the effects felt, are they visible to the affected)
Friedman, Batya and Nissenbaum, Helen. 1996. “Bias in Computer
Systems,” ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 14(3): 330-
347. [Link]
pdf
Nissenbaum, Helen and Walker, Decker. 1998. “Will Computers
Dehumanize Education? A Grounded Approach to Values at
Risk,” Technology in Society, 20: 237-
273. [Link]
6
Introna, Lucas D., and Helen Nissenbaum. 2000. “Shaping the Web:
Why the Politics of Search Engines Matters.” The Information Society
16(3): 169-185.
[Link]
([Link]
)
Introna, Lucas and Nissenbaum, Helen. 2000. “Defining the Web: The
Politics of Search Engines,” IEEE Computer, 54-
62. [Link]
[Link]
([Link]
[Link])
Nissenbaum, Helen. 2001. “How Computer Systems Embody
Values,” IEEE Computer, 120, 118-119.
[Link]
([Link]
Introna, Lucas D., and David Wood. 2004. ‘‘Picturing Algorithmic
Surveillance: The Politics of Facial Recognition Systems.’’ Surveillance
& Society 2 (2/3): 177-98 [Link]
[Link]/articles2(2)/[Link] ([Link]
[Link]/articles2(2)/[Link])
Graham, Stephen D. N. 2005. ‘‘Software-sorted Geographies.’’ Progress
in Human Geography 29 (5): 562-580.
[Link]
[Link]
([Link]
[Link])
Hargittai, Eszter. 2007. The social, political, economic, and cultural
dimensions of search engines: An introduction. Journal of Computer-
Mediated Communication, 12(3), 769-777.
[Link]
6101.2007.00349.x/abstract
([Link]
6101.2007.00349.x/abstract)
Poon, Martha 2007. “Scorecards as devices for consumer credit: the case
of Fair, Isaac & Company Incorporated” The Sociological Review. 55(2):
284-306. [Link]
954X.2007.00740.x/abstract
([Link]
954X.2007.00740.x/abstract)
Introna, Lucas and Nissenbaum, Helen, 2009. “Facial Recognition
Technology: A Survey of Policy and Implementation Issues,” Report of
the Center for Catastrophe Preparedness and Response, NYU.
[Link]
[Link]
([Link]
[Link])
Granka, Laura A. 2010. “The Politics of Search: A Decade
Retrospective.” The Information Society 26 (5): 364-74.
[Link]
([Link]
Ananny, Mike. 2011. “The Curious Connection Between Apps for Gay
Men and Sex Offenders.” The Atlantic. April 14.
[Link]
connection-between-apps-for-gay-men-and-sex-offenders/237340/
([Link]
connection-between-apps-for-gay-men-and-sex-offenders/237340/)
Introna, Lucas D. 2011. “The Enframing of Code: Agency, Originality
and the Plagiarist.” Theory, Culture & Society 28 (6): 113-41.
[Link]
([Link]
Anderson, Chris W. 2011. “Deliberative, Agonistic, and Algorithmic
Audiences: Journalism’s Vision of Its Public in an Age of Audience
Transparency.” International Journal of Communication 5: 19.
[Link]
([Link]
Lenglet, Marc. 2011. “Conflicting codes and codings: how algorithmic
trading is reshaping financial regulation.” Theory, Culture & Society,
28(6), 44-66. [Link]
([Link]
Lipartito, Kenneth. 2011. “The Narrative and the Algorithm: Genres of
Credit Reporting from the Nineteenth Century to Today.”
[Link] ([Link]
Anderson, C. W. 2012. “Towards a Sociology of Computational and
Algorithmic Journalism.” New Media & Society, 15(7) 1005-1021.
[Link]
([Link]
Noble, Safiya. 2012. “Missed Connections: What Search Engines Say
about Women. Bitch magazine, 12(4): 37-41.
[Link]
([Link]
f)
Pariser, Eli. 2012. The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web Is
Changing What We Read and How We Think. Reprint edition. New York,
N.Y.: Penguin Books.
Halfaker, Aaron, Geiger, R. Stuart, Morgan, Jonathan, & Riedl, John.
2012. “The rise and decline of an open collaboration system: How
Wikipedia’s reaction to popularity is causing its decline.” American
Behavioral Scientist, 0002764212469365. [Link]
[Link]/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/halfaker
[Link] ([Link]
[Link]/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_and_Decline/halfaker
[Link])
van Dijck, José. 2013. “Facebook and the Engineering of Connectivity: A
Multi-Layered Approach to Social Media Platforms.” Convergence: The
International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 19(2): 141-
155. [Link]
([Link]
van Dijck, José. 2013. The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of
Social Media. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Baker, Paul, and Amanda Potts. 2013. “‘Why Do White People Have
Thin Lips?’ Google and the Perpetuation of Stereotypes via Auto-
Complete Search Forms.” Critical Discourse Studies 10(2): 187-204.
[Link]
kDrK6rTOY
([Link]
kDrK6rTOY)
Lenglet, Marc. 2013. “Algorithms and the Manufacture of Financial
Reality”. In Harvey, P., Casella, E., Evans, G., Knox, H., McLean, C.,
Silva, E., Thoburn, N. and Woodward, K. (eds), Objects and Materials.
A Routledge Companion. London, Routledge, 312-322.
[Link]
of_Financial_Reality
([Link]
_of_Financial_Reality)
Cardon, Dominique and Libbrecht, Liz. 2013. “ Dans l’esprit du
PageRank ”, Réseaux 1(177): 63-95. [Link]
[Link] ([Link]
[Link])
McKelvey, Fenwick. 2014. “Algorithmic Media Need Democratic
Methods: Why Publics Matter.” Canadian Journal of Communication 39(4):
597+. [Link]
content/uploads/2014/11/[Link]
([Link]
[Link])
Braverman, Irus. 2014. “Governing the Wild: Databases, Algorithms,
and Population Models as Biopolitics.” Surveillance & Society 12(1): 15-
37. [Link] ([Link]
Latzer, Michael, Katharina Hollnbuchner, Natascha Just, and Florian
Saurwein. 2014. “The economics of algorithmic selection on the
Internet.” Zurich: Institute of Mass Communication and Media
Research.
[Link]
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[Link]
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7665_The_economics_of_algorithmic_selection_on_the_Internet/links/5
[Link])
Pasquale, Frank. 2015. The Black Box Society: The Secret Algorithms That
Control Money and Information. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Benthall, Sebastian. 2015.“Designing Networked Publics for
Communicative Action.” Interface 1(1): 1-30.
[Link]
([Link]
Crawford, Kate. 2015. “Can an Algorithm Be Agonistic? Ten Scenes
from Life in Calculated Publics.” Science, Technology & Human Values.
[Link]
ract
([Link]
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Tufekci, Zeynep. 2015. “Algorithmic Harms beyond Facebook and
Google: Emergent Challenges of Computational Agency” Colorado
Technology Law Journal. v13 n2 [Link]
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Bolin, Göran & Jonas Andersson Schwarz 2015. ‘Heuristics of the
Algorithm. Big Data, User Interpretation and Translation Strategies’,
Big Data & Society, July-Dec 2015: 1-12.
[Link]
([Link]
Greenfield, Adam. 2015. “Uber, or: The technics and politics of socially
corrosive mobility.” Adam Greenfield’s Speedbird. June 29.
[Link]
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([Link]
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Lustig, Caitlin, and Nardi, Bonnie. 2015. “Algorithmic Authority: The
Case of Bitcoin.” 48th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences
(HICSS), 743-752.
[Link]
([Link]
Kennedy, Eric Brian. 2015. Voting by Quiz: Online Algorithms and
Election Education. Engaging Science, Technology, and Society, 1, 73–
78. [Link]
([Link]
Milan, Stefania. 2015. “When Algorithms Shape Collective Action:
Social Media and the Dynamics of Cloud Protesting.” Social Media &
Society, 1(2). [Link]
([Link]
Dörr, Konstantin. 2015. “Mapping the field of Algorithmic Journalism.”
Digital Journalism, 4(6): 700-722.
[Link]
([Link]
Nahon, Karine. 2016, “Where there is Social Media, there is Politics”, in
Bruns A., Skogerbo E., Christensen C., Larsson O.A. and Enli G.S., eds.
Routledge Companion to Social Media and Politics. New York: Routledge:
39-55. [Link]
([Link]
DeVito, Michael. 2016. “From Editors to Algorithms: A values-based
approach to understanding story selection in the Facebook news feed.”
Digital Journalism, forthcoming
[Link]
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([Link]
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Noble, Safiya. [forthcoming, 2016] Algorithms of Oppression: Race, Gender
and Power in the Digital Age. New York: NYU Press.
Williamson, Ben. 2017. “Computing Brains: Learning Algorithms and
Neurocomputation in the smart city.” Information, Communication &
Society, 20(1).
[Link]
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([Link]
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Gillespie, Tarleton. 2017. “Algorithmically recognizable: Santorum’s
Google problem, and Google’s Santorum problem.” Information,
Communication & Society, 20(1).
[Link]
bstract
([Link]
bstract)
1.2 with algorithms come rationalization / automation / quantification,
and the erasure of human judgment / complexity / context
Dutton, William H., & Kraemer, Kenneth. 1980. “Automating bias.”
Society, 17(2), 36–41.
Helmreich, Stefan. 1998. “Recombination, Rationality, Reductionism
and Romantic Reactions: Culture, Computers, and the Genetic
Algorithm.” Social Studies of Science 28(1): 39-71.
[Link]
([Link]
Thrift, Nigel, and Shaun French. 2002. “The Automatic Production of
Space.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 27(3): 309-335.
[Link]
([Link]
Graham, Stephen, & Wood, David. 2003. Digitizing surveillance:
categorization, space, inequality. Critical Social Policy, 23(2), 227-248.
[Link]
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Pasquinelli, Matteo. 2009. “Google’s PageRank algorithm: a diagram of
cognitive capitalism and the rentier of the common intellect” in Deep
Search: The Politics of Search beyond Google. London: Transaction
Publishers. [Link]
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Nakamura, Lisa. 2009. “The socioalgorithmics of race: sorting it out in
Jihad worlds.” In Shoshana Magnet & Kelly Gates, eds., The New Media
of Surveillance. Abingdon: Routledge: 149-162.
[Link]
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Wilf, Eitan. 2013. “Toward an Anthropology of Computer-Mediated,
Algorithmic Forms of Sociality.” Current Anthropology 54(6): 716-739.
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Kockelman, Paul. 2013. “The anthropology of an equation. Sieves, spam
filters, agentive algorithms, and ontologies of transformation.” Hau 3(3).
[Link]
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Wilf, Eitan. 2013. “From Media Technologies That Reproduce Seconds
to Media Technologies That Reproduce Thirds: A Peircean Perspective
on Stylistic Fidelity and Style-Reproducing Computerized Algorithms.”
Signs and Society, 1(2), 185–
211. [Link]
([Link]
Grosser, Benjamin. 2014. “What Do Metrics Want? How Quantification
Prescribes Social Interaction on Facebook.” Computational Culture.
[Link]
([Link]
Napoli, Philip M. 2014. “On Automation in Media Industries:
Integrating Algorithmic Media Production into Media Industries
Scholarship.” Media Industries 1(1).
[Link]
([Link]
Kockelman, Paul. 2014. “Linguistic anthropology in the age of language
automata.” The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology.
Cambridge University Press, 708-733.
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Reigeluth, Tyler. 2014. Why data is not enough: Digital traces as control
of self and self-control, Surveillance & Society 12(2): 243-254.
[Link]
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Seaver, Nick. 2015. “Bastard algebra.” In Tom Boelstorff and Bill
Maurer, eds., Data, Now Bigger and Better! Chicago: Prickly Paradigm
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Karppi, Tero, and Crawford, Kate. 2015. “Social Media, Financial
Algorithms and the Hack Crash.” Theory, Culture & Society.
[Link]
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McQuillan, Daniel. 2015. “Algorithmic States of Exception.” European
Journal of Cultural Studies 18(4/5). [Link]
([Link]
Introna, Lucas. 2015. “Algorithms, Governance, and Governmentality:
On Governing Academic Writing.” Science, Technology & Human Values.
[Link]
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Neyland, Daniel. 2015. “On Organizing Algorithms.” Theory, Culture &
Society 32(1): 119-132. [Link]
([Link]
Pasquale, Frank. 2015. “The Algorithmic Self.” 17(1) The Hedgehog
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Fourcade, Marion, and Kieran Healy. 2015. “Seeing Like a Market.”
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Owen, Taylor. 2015. “The Violence of Algorithms.” Foreign Affairs.
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Williamson, Ben. 2015. “Governing software: networks, databases and
algorithmic power in the digital governance of public education.”
Learning, Media and Technology 40(1): 83-105.
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Cheney-Lippold, John (2016). Jus Algoritmi: How the National Security
Agency Remade Citizenship. International Journal of Communication, 10,
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Just, Natascha and Latzer, Michael. 2016. “Governance by Algorithms:
Reality Construction by Algorithmic Selection on the Internet.” Media,
Culture & Society, forthcoming.
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Ochigame, Rodrigo and Holston, James. 2016. “Filtering Dissent: Social
Media and Land Struggles in Brazil” The New Left Review, 99: May-June.
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1.3 questions of accountability and policy responses around algorithms
Pasquale, Frank. 2006. “Rankings, Reductionism, and Responsibility”
Cleveland State Law Review, 54:115+.
[Link]
([Link]
Pasquale, Frank. 2006. “Rankings, Reductionism, and Responsibility”
Cleveland State Law Review, 54:115+.
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Neyland, D. 2007. “Achieving Transparency: The Visible, Invisible and
Divisible in Academic Accountability Networks.” Organization 14 (4):
499–516.
Grimmelmann, James. 2008. “The Google Dilemma.” New York Law
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Kraemer, Felicitas, Kees Overveld, and Martin Peterson. 2010. ‘‘Is There
an Ethics of Algorithms?’’ Ethics and Information Technology 13 (3):
251-60.
McKelvey, Fenwick. 2010. “Ends and Ways: The Algorithmic Politics of
Network Neutrality.” Global Media Journal: Canadian Edition 3(1): 51-73.
[Link]
([Link]
Anderson, Robert, and Sharrock, Wesley. 2013. “Ethical Algorithms: A
Brief Comment on an Extensive Muddle.”
[Link]
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Crawford, Kate, and Jason Schultz. 2014. “Big Data and Due Process:
Toward a Framework to Redress Predictive Privacy Harms.” Boston
College Law Review, 55(1): 93+.
[Link]
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Diakopoulos, Nicholas. 2013. ‘‘Algorithmic Accountability Reporting:
On the Investigation of Black Boxes.’’ A Tow/Knight Brief. New York:
Columbia Journalism School, Tow Center for Digital Journalism.
[Link]
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Reporting_final.pdf ([Link]
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Reporting_final.pdf)
O’Reilly, Tim. 2013. ‘‘Open Data and Algorithmic Regulation.’’ In
Beyond Transparency: Open Data and the Future of Civic Innovation, edited
by Brett Goldstein, 289-300. San Francisco, CA: Code for America Press.
[Link]
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Benjamin, S.M. (2013). “Algorithms and Speech.” University of
Pennsylvania Law Review 161(6): 1445-1494.
[Link]
article=5758&context=faculty_scholarship
([Link]
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Bozdag, Engin. 2013. ‘‘Bias in Algorithmic Filtering and
Personalization.’’ Ethics and Information Technology 15 (3): 209-27.
Hazan, Joshua. (2013). “Stop Being Evil: A Proposal for Unbiased
Google Search.” Michigan Law Review 111(5): 789-820.
[Link]
article=1057&context=mlr
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Luca, Michael, Jon Kleinberg, and Sendhil Mullainathan. 2016.
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Gourarie, Chava.2016. “Investigating the algorithms that govern our
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2. algorithms fit with, and help advance, specific ideological
worldviews
(critical theory approach, including capitalism, surveillance, subject/object)
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Galloway, Alexander R. 2006. Gaming: Essays On Algorithmic Culture.
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Golumbia, David. 2009. The Cultural Logic of Computation. Cambridge,
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Cheney-Lippold, John. 2011. “A New Algorithmic Identity: Soft
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Mager, Astrid. 2012. “Algorithmic Ideology: How Capitalist Society
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Beer, David. 2013. “Algorithms: Shaping Tastes and Manipulating the
Circulations of Popular Culture.” In Popular Culture and New Media: The
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Manovich, Lev. 2013. Software Takes Command. New York: Bloomsbury
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Snake-Beings, Emit. 2013. “From Ideology to Algorithm: the Opaque
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Totaro, Paolo, and Ninno, Domenico. 2014. “The Concept of Algorithm
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3. algorithms are complex technical assemblages, that have to be
mapped
(actor network -ish)
Callon, Michel, and Muniesa, Fabian. 2005. “Economic Markets as
Calculative Collective Devices.” Organization Studies, 26(8), 1229-1250.
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MacKenzie, Donald A. 2006. An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial
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Amoore, Louise. 2009. “Algorithmic War: Everyday Geographies of the
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Helmond, Anne. 2013. “The Algorithmization of the Hyperlink.”
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Weltevrede, Esther, Anne Helmond, and Carolin Gerlitz. 2014. “The
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Rouvroy, Antoinette and Berns, Thomas. 2013. “ Gouvernementalité
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Geiger, R. Stuart. 2014. “Bots, Bespoke, Code and the Materiality of
Software Platforms.” Information, Communication & Society 17 (3): 342–
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Mackenzie, Donald. 2014. “A Sociology of Algorithms: High-Frequency
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Mackenzie, Donald and Spears, Taylor, 2014. “‘The Formula That Killed
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Neyland, Daniel & Möllers, Norma. 2016 “Algorithmic IF … THEN
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4. algorithms aren’t just technical artifacts, they’re fundamentally
human in their design and their use
(social construction of technical systems approach / anthropology and
ethnographic instinct)
4.1 people design and maintain algorithms, in specific ways, and that
matters
Sterne, Jonathan. 2006. “The mp3 as cultural artifact.” New Media &
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van Couvering, Elizabeth. 2007. “Is Relevance Relevant? Market,
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Ensmenger, Nathan. 2012. “Is Chess the Drosophila of Artificial
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Vaidhyanathan, Siva. 2012. The Googlization of Everything (And Why We
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of Reviewing, Rating and Ranking on the Web.” PhD Thesis, Oxford:
University of Oxford.
Sterne, Jonathan. 2012. MP3: The Meaning of a Format. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press.
Seaver, Nick. 2012. “Algorithmic Recommendations and Synaptic
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Mackenzie, Adrian. 2013. “Programming Subjects in the Regime of
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Diakopolous, Nick. 2013. “Sex, Violence, and Autocomplete
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Hallinan, Blake, and Ted Striphas. 2014. “Recommended for You: The
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Cardoso Llach, Daniel. 2015. Builders of the Vision: Software and the
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Arnoldi, Jakob. (2016). “Computer Algorithms, Market Manipulation
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4.2 people work, play, and live algorithms, in specific ways, and that
matters
(mediated cultural practices approach)
Kitchin, Rob and Dodge, Martin. 2011. Code/Space: Software and Everyday
Life. MIT Press
Beunza, Daniel and Millo, Yuval. 2015. “Blended automation:
integrating algorithms on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange”
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Ekbia, Hamid and Bonnie Nardi. 2014. “Heteromation and Its
(Dis)contents: the Invisible Division of Labor Between Humans and
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Aneesh, Aneesh. 2009. “Global Labor: Algocratic Modes of
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Geiger, R. Stuart. 2011. “The Lives of Bots.” In Wikipedia: A Critical Point
of View. Geert Lovink and Nathaniel Tkacz, eds. Amsterdam: Institute of
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Bucher, Taina. 2012. “Want to Be on the Top? Algorithmic Power and
the Threat of Invisibility on Facebook.” New Media & Society 14 (7):
1164–80.
[Link]
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stract)
Gillespie, Tarleton. 2012. “Can an Algorithm Be Wrong?” Limn 1(2).
[Link]
([Link]
van Dalen, Arjen. 2012. “The Algorithms behind the Headlines: How
machine-written news redefines the core skills of human journalists.”
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([Link]
Schüll, Natasha Dow. 2014. Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las
Vegas. Reprint edition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Carah, Nicholas 2015. “Algorithmic brands: A decade of brand
experiments with mobile and social media” New Media & Society.
[Link]
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Ananny, Mike & Crawford, Kate. 2015. A liminal press: Situating news
app designers within a field of networked news production. Digital
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[Link]
([Link]
Lee, Min Kyung, Kusbit, Daniel, Metsky, Evan and Dabbish, Laura.
2015. “Working with Machines: The Impact of Algorithmic and Data-
Driven Management on Human Workers” CHI ’15 Proceedings of the
33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems:
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([Link]
Applin, Sally and Michael Fischer. 2015. “New Technologies and
Mixed-Use Convergence: How Humans and Algorithms are Adapting
to Each Other.” In IEEE International Symposium on Technology and
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Carlson, Matt. 2015. “The Robotic Reporter: Automated journalism and
the redefinition of labor, compositional forms, and journalistic
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[Link]
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Rossiter, Ned and Zehle, Soenke. 2015. “The Aesthetics of Algorithmic
Experience.” In Randy Martin, ed., The Routledge Companion to Art and
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([Link]
Gillespie, Tarleton. 2016. “#trendingistrending:when algorithms become
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([Link]
Wolf, Christine. 2016. “DIY videos on YouTube: Identity and possibility
in the age of algorithms.” First Monday, 21(6).
[Link]
([Link]
Willson, Michele. 2017. “Algorithms (and the) everyday.” Information,
Communication & Society, 20(1).
[Link]
([Link]
4.3 what do users understand about algorithms
Hamilton, Kevin, Karrie Karahalios, Christian Sandvig, and Motahhare
Eslami. 2014. “A Path to Understanding the Effects of Algorithm
Awareness.” In CHI 2014, 631-642. ACM Press.
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Devendorf, Laura and Elizabeth Goodman. 2014. “The Algorithm
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Dietvorst, Berkeley, Simmons, Joseph, and Massey, Cade. 2014.
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Berg, Martin. 2014. Participatory trouble: Towards an understanding of
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[Link]
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Eslami, Motahhare, Rickman, Aimee, Vaccaro, Kristen, Aleyasen,
Amirhossein, Vuong, Andy, Karahalios, Karrie, Hamilton, Kevin, &
Sandvig, Christian. 2015. “I always assumed that I wasn’t really that
close to [her]”: Reasoning about Invisible Algorithms in News Feeds.”
33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
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[Link]/~csandvig/research/Eslami_Algorithms_CHI15.pdf
)
Bucher, Taina. 2016. “The algorithmic imaginary: exploring the
ordinary affects of Facebook algorithms.” Information, Communication &
Society.
[Link]
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Rader, Emilee, and Gray, Rebecca. 2015. “Understanding User Beliefs
About Algorithmic Curation in the Facebook News Feed.” In
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Computing Systems. New York, NY, USA: ACM: 173-182.
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Bucher, Taina. 2017. “The algorithmic imaginary: exploring the
ordinary affects of Facebook algorithms.” Information, Communication &
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4.4 the discursive production of algorithms to shape their public
perception
Sandvig, Christian. 2015. “Seeing the Sort: The Aesthetic and Industrial
Defense of ‘The Algorithm.’” Journal of the New Media Caucus
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algorithm/)
Roberge, Jonathan and Melançon, Louis. 2015. “Being the King Kong of
algorithmic culture is a tough job after all: Google’s regimes of
justification and the meanings of Glass.” Convergence.
[Link]
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([Link]
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Neyland, Daniel. 2016. “Bearing Account-Able Witness to the Ethical
Algorithmic System.” Science, Technology & Human Values 41(1).
[Link]
ract
([Link]
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Birkbak, Andreas and Hjalmar Bang Carlsen. 2016. “The World of
Edgerank: Rhetorical Justifications of Facebook’s News Feed
Algorithm.” Computational Culture 5.
[Link]
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Bucher, Taina. 2016. “‘Machines don’t have instincts’: Articulating the
computational in journalism.” New Media & Society
[Link]
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Bilic, Pasko. 2016. “Search algorithms, hidden labour, and information
control” Big Data & Society, January-June 2016: 1-9
[Link]
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5. methods and approaches for studying algorithmic systems
Ratto, Matt. 2011. “Critical Making: Conceptual and Material Studies in
Technology and Social Life.” The Information Society 27 (4): 252–60.
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Edelman, Benjamin. 2011. “Bias in Search Results? Diagnosis and
Response.” Indian Journal of Law and Technology 7: 16-32.
[Link]
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Marres, Noortje. 2012. “The redistribution of methods: on intervention
in digital social research, broadly conceived.” The Sociological Review,
60(S1): 139-165.
[Link]
f
([Link]
df)
Diakopolous, Nick. 2013. “Rage against the Algorithms” The Atlantic,
October 3.
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Sandvig, Christian, Kevin Hamilton, Karrie Karahalios, and Cedric
Langbort. 2014. “Auditing Algorithms: Research Methods for Detecting
Discrimination on Internet Platforms.” Data and Discrimination:
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pdf ([Link]
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Sandvig, Christian, Hamilton, Kevin, Karahalios, Karrie, & Langbort,
Cedric. 2014. “An Algorithm Audit.” In: Seeta Peña Gangadharan, ed.,
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Rieder, Bernard, and Sire, Guillaume. 2014. “Conflicts of Interest and
Incentives to Bias: A Microeconomic Critique of Google’s Tangled
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Gehl, Robert W. 2014. Reverse Engineering Social Media: Software, Culture,
and Political Economy in New Media Capitalism. Philadelphia,
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Hannak, Aniko, Mislove, Alan, Soeller, Gary, Wilson, Chirsto, and
Lazer, David. 2014. “Measuring price discrimination and steering on e-
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Burrell, Jenna. 2016. “How the Machine ‘Thinks:’ Understanding
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([Link]
Perrotta, Carlo and Williamson, Ben. 2016. “The social life of Learning
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Rieder, Bernhard. 2016. “Scrutinizing an Algorithmic Technique: The
Bayes Classifier as Interested Reading of Reality.” Information,
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[Link]
bstract
([Link]
bstract)
47 thoughts on “Critical Algorithm
Studies: a Reading List”
1. Memo Akten (@memotv)
great list, thanks for this. Seeing as algorithms today are almost
synonymous with (or rather, a subset of) artificial intelligence, i’m
surprised not to see more material on AI. e.g. A recent collection of
200 short essays (some optimistic, others critical) at
[Link]
think . Nick Bostrom has many papers on ethics and impact of AI,
and of course his book super intelligence.
[Link] also as part of the Future of
Humanity Institute that he runs
[Link] . More essays here
[Link]
intelligence-1.17611 and [Link]
and scattered throughout [Link] and of
course the open letter regarding priorities of AI research
[Link] . Some of these tend towards
the more philosophical artificial ‘general’ intelligence debate, thus
they have less immediate impact on society today. But nevertheless
anyone thinking about these topics should at least have these
references in the back of their mind I think. Then there’s also a lot of
papers which are mostly technical AI research, thus they live in that
context (technical AI journals, conferences etc) but they also touch
upon critical issues and I think are vital to this discourse too. e.g.
[Link]
NOVEMBER 5, 2015 AT 10:56 PM REPLY
Tarleton Gillespie
This is a superb point, and thanks so much for all of the useful
links. nick and I had a similar question when it came to literature
that gathers around the idea of “big data,” which we might
consider either the same literature, or certainly a close sibling.
We decided to focus our efforts on work that explicitly orients
itself towards algorithms, trying to work out what that should
mean sociologically, and that uses it as a analytical step. But I
think a larger, umbrella list might include scholarship focused
on algorithms, scholarship focused on artificial intelligence,
scholarship focused on machine learning, scholarship focused on
big data, and scholarship focused on complex computational
systems. Perhaps we need five lists that are themselves
components of a mega list. Thanks again!
NOVEMBER 6, 2015 AT 10:20 AM REPLY
1. Sebastian Benthall
I want to second this comment.
The “Superintelligence” anxieties and those expressed in some of
the headers in the original list (especially rationalization vs.
context) are contiguous.
Though these are quite different scholarly communities and
approaches, including the analytic futurist discussion would
create opportunities for really interesting dialog.
NOVEMBER 6, 2015 AT 1:58 PM REPLY
2. Martina
This is an excellent list, thanks for putting it together!
NOVEMBER 6, 2015 AT 3:50 AM REPLY
3. Jonathan Sterne
Great list. At the risk of appearing shameless, my MP3: THE
MEANING OF A FORMAT also discusses the deep history of an
algorithm.
NOVEMBER 6, 2015 AT 10:21 AM REPLY
Tarleton Gillespie
Of course! Added, as well as the NM&S paper that preceded it.
NOVEMBER 6, 2015 AT 11:48 AM REPLY
4. Mark Graham ✨ (@geoplace)
You could be interested in some of our work on how algorithms
impact on how we move through (and imagine and enact) our cities:
Ford, H., and Graham, M. 2016. Semantic Cities: Coded Geopolitics
and the Rise of the Semantic Web. In Code and the City. eds.
Kitchin, R., and Perng, S-Y. London: Routledge. (in press).
Graham, M., M. Zook., and A. Boulton. 2013. Augmented Reality in
the Urban Environment: contested content and the duplicity of code.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. 38(3), 464-479.
Graham, M. 2013. The Virtual Dimension. In Global City Challenges:
debating a concept, improving the practice. eds. M. Acuto and W.
Steele. London: Palgrave. 117-139.
Zook, M. & M. Graham. 2007. The Creative Reconstruction of the
Internet: Google and the Privatization of Cyberspace and DigiPlace.
Geoforum, 38, 1322-1343.
NOVEMBER 6, 2015 AT 10:47 AM REPLY
Tarleton Gillespie
Very interested. Will add!
NOVEMBER 6, 2015 AT 11:47 AM REPLY
1. S Bollebakker
Hamilton, K., K. Karahalios, C. Sandvig and C. Langbort. ‘The
Image of the Algorithmic City: A Research Approach’.
Interaction Design and Architecture(s) Journal 20 (2014): 61–71.
Also ties in with ideas about algorithms and (smart) cities. Could
be added perhaps.
NOVEMBER 10, 2015 AT 4:22 AM REPLY
5. Göran Bolin
Really useful list. Thanks for putting this together. You might be
interested in adding this piece:
Bolin, Göran & Jonas Andersson Schwarz (2015): ‘Heuristics of the
Algorithm. Big Data, User Interpretation and Translation Strategies’,
Big Data & Society, July–December 2015: 1–12. DOI:
10.1177/2053951715608406.
([Link]
Really a pity that we didn’t have this list when we wrote that piece.
NOVEMBER 6, 2015 AT 11:07 AM REPLY
Tarleton Gillespie
Thanks! Added. Also a pity I didn’t have this as I was writing
my latest essay, but I have revision time to incorporate. Thanks
for sending!
NOVEMBER 6, 2015 AT 11:47 AM REPLY
6. Jacob Thebault-Spieker
I’m very excited about this list, looks like some interesting reading.
In case you’re interested, I figured I’d mention our work, as I think it
fits particularly well into section 4.2:
Jacob Thebault-Spieker, Loren G. Terveen, and Brent Hecht. 2015.
Avoiding the South Side and the Suburbs: The Geography of Mobile
Crowdsourcing Markets. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM
Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social
Computing (CSCW ’15). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 265-275.
DOI=[Link]
NOVEMBER 6, 2015 AT 12:13 PM REPLY
7. Sebastian Benthall
Thank you so much for compiling this list. I think it will be
extraordinarily helpful to my work!
I am fascinated by the disciplinary distinction you are drawing here
between engineering/CS/etc. and the areas of scholarship that you
are including. As we know, where these kinds of boundaries are
drawn matter. Why this boundary?
I would also like to shamefully submit a piece I wrote to this list.
[Link]
NOVEMBER 6, 2015 AT 1:47 PM REPLY
Tarleton Gillespie
Thanks! The distinction we meant, at least at first, was that we
were specifying a more sociological attention to algorithms and
their implications, as opposed to the vast literature about
algorithms and their workings, i.e. the CS scholarship that
focuses on designing them. This is not meant to exclude
literature, for example in ACM contexts, that are nevertheless
asking political, sociological, or anthropological kinds of
questions. It is admittedly a fuzzy distinction, and I for one am
ill-equipped to be able to specify the difference inside of CS-
styled scholarship.
NOVEMBER 6, 2015 AT 2:06 PM REPLY
8. Jathan Sadowski
Fantastic list, real solid work. Here are some other suggestions that
you may want to add up there. Some of them might not fit strictly
under the “algorithm” rubric.
Amoore, Louise. (2009). “Algorithmic War: Everyday Geographies of
the War on Terror.” Antipode 41 (1): 49–69
Dodge, Martin and Kitchin, Rob. (2011). Code/Space: Software and
Everyday Life. MIT Press
Snider, L. (2014). “Interrogating the Algorithm: Debt, Derivatives
and the Social Reconstruction of Stock Market Trading.” Critical
Sociology 40 (5): 747–761.
Pasquale, Frank. (2015). “The Algorithmic Self.” The Hedgehog
Review 17 (1): [Link]
[Link]/THR/THR_article_2015_Spring_Pasquale.php
McQuillan, Dan. (2015). “Algorithmic States of Exception.”
European Journal of Cultural Studies 18 (4-5): 564–576.
Scannell, Josh. (2015). “What Can An Algorithm Do?” DIS Magazine
[Link]
an-algorithm-do/
And here’s one I wrote that might fit into this list:
Sadowski, J. (2015). “From Mega-Machines to Mega-Algorithms.”
The New Inquiry, April 28: [Link]
mega-machines-to-mega-algorithms/
NOVEMBER 6, 2015 AT 2:11 PM REPLY
Tarleton Gillespie
Thank you for these! Will add.
NOVEMBER 6, 2015 AT 2:13 PM REPLY
9. David
So much to read here… thanks!
There’s another early one of mine (with Steve Graham) that should
be here: Graham, S., & Wood, D. (2003). Digitizing surveillance:
categorization, space, inequality. Critical Social Policy, 23(2), 227-
248.
And, despite what Google Scholar claims, my paper ‘Picturing
Algorithmic Surveillance’ with Lucas Introna came afterwards, in
2004. It’s best found at:
[Link]
society/article/view/3373.
Other pieces from Surveillance & Society not included yet:
O’Donnell, Casey (2014) Getting Played: Gamification and the Rise
of Algorithmic Surveillance, Surveillance & Society 12(3): 349-359
[Link]
society/article/view/played
Braverman, Irus (2014) Governing the Wild: Databases, Algorithms,
and Population Models as Biopolitics, Surveillance & Society 12(1):
15-37 [Link]
society/article/view/wild
And just about all the articles in Vol 12, No 2 (2014) Big Data
Surveillance, edited by Mark Andrejevic and Kelly Gates (you can
check them and choose!):
van Dijck, Jose (2014) Datafication, dataism and dataveillance: Big
Data between scientific paradigm and ideology, Surveillance &
Society 12(2): 197-208.
[Link]
society/article/view/datafication
Degli Esposti, Sara (2014) When big data meets dataveillance: the
hidden side of analytics, Surveillance & Society 12(2): 209-225.
[Link]
society/article/view/analytics
French, Martin (2014) Gaps in the gaze: Informatic practice and the
work of public health surveillance, Surveillance & Society 12(2): 226-
242. [Link]
society/article/view/gaps
Reigeluth Tyler B. (2014) Why data is not enough: Digital traces as
control of self and self-control, Surveillance & Society 12(2): 243-254.
[Link]
society/article/view/enough
van Otterlo, Martijn (2014) Automated Experimentation in Walden
3.0. : The Next step in Profiling, Predicting, Control and
Surveillance, Surveillance & Society 12(2): 255-272.
[Link]
society/article/view/walden3
Klauser, Francisco R and Albrechtslund, Anders (2014) From self-
tracking to smart urban infrastructures: towards an interdisciplinary
research agenda on Big Data, Surveillance & Society 12(2): 273-286.
[Link]
society/article/view/infrastructures
Lindsay Thomas, Lindsay (2014) Pandemics of the future: Disease
surveillance in real time, Surveillance & Society 12(2): :287-300.
[Link]
society/article/view/pandemics
NOVEMBER 6, 2015 AT 9:06 PM REPLY
10. Martin Berg
Great collection. Thanks! Here are some suggestions on papers
focusing on algorithms that might be added to the list:
Berg, M. (2014). Participatory trouble: Towards an understanding of
algorithmic structures on Facebook. Cyberpsychology: Journal of
Psychosocial research on Cyberspace, 8(3), Article 2.
[Link]
cisloclanku=2014093001&article=2
Berg, M. (2012). Social Intermediaries and the Location of Agency: A
Conceptual Reconfiguration of Social Network Sites. Contemporary
Social Science, 7(3), 321-333.
[Link]
.Vj3mdYSgPPI
NOVEMBER 7, 2015 AT 6:57 AM REPLY
11. nrgiga
Great list! I would have probably add:
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (2011), Programmed Visions;
Fox Harrell (2013), Phantasmal Media.
NOVEMBER 7, 2015 AT 12:27 PM REPLY
12. Daniel Cardoso Llach
Thanks for compiling such a great (if daunting) list! A few titles
come to mind:
This offers critical perspectives on the development of AI algorithms
in a research lab:
Agre, Philip. 1997. Computation and Human Experience.
Cambridge University Press.
This offers discussions and ethnographic accounts of how certain
algorithms (e.g. radiosity) enable professionals to make new claims
and re-define their social roles.
Loukissas, Yanni Alexander. 2012. Co-Designers: Cultures of
Computer Simulation in Architecture. New York: Routledge.
You may also wish to include my recent book where I discuss the
development of the first algorithms for numerical control and
Computer-Aided Design through a STS-Design Studies lens.
Cardoso Llach, Daniel. 2015. Builders of the Vision: Software and
the Imagination of Design. London, New York: Routledge.
A version of one of the chapters can be accessed for free here:
Cardoso Llach, Daniel. 2015. “Software Comes to Matter: Towards a
Material History of Computational Design.” DesignIssues 31 (3): 41–
55. doi:10.1162/DESI_a_00337.
[Link]
There’s also this early discussion about visual algorithms in design
and the arts:
Stiny, George, and James Gips. 1978. “Algorithmic Aesthetics:
Computer Models for Criticism and Design in the Arts.”
Algorithmic Aesthetics. [Link]
And this one, which takes liberties with the term but illustrates how
contemporary architectural theories frame the question of
algorithms.
Carpo, Mario. 2011. The Alphabet and the Algorithm. 1st ed. The
MIT Press.
NOVEMBER 7, 2015 AT 7:25 PM REPLY
13. Justin
Wow. A tremendous list, indeed. I will be returning here to read
more later. I really enjoyed the Deleuze article that builds upon
some of key Foucaldian terms.
Here are some others you might wish to add:
Eslami, M., Rickman, A., Vaccaro, K., Aleyasen, A., Vuong, A.,
Karahalios, K., Hamilton, K., & Sandvig, C. (2015). “I always
assumed that I wasn’t really that close to [her]”: Reasoning about
Invisible Algorithms in News Feeds. Paper presented at 33rd
Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
Pages 153-162
Greenfield, A. (2015, June 29). Uber, or: The technics and politics of
socially corrosive mobility [blog].
[Link]
and-politics-of-socially-corrosive-mobility/
Hannak, A., Mislove, A., Soeller, G., Wilson, C., & Lazer, D. (2014,
November). Measuring price discrimination and steering on e-
commerce web sites. Paper presented at 2014 Conference on Internet
Measurement Conference. Pages 305-318
Hargittai, E. (2007). The social, political, economic, and cultural
dimensions of search engines: An introduction. Journal of
Computer-Mediated Communication, 12, 769-777.
Hess, A. (2014). You are what you compute (and what is computed
for you): Considerations of digital rhetorical identification. Journal
of Contemporary Rhetoric, 4(1/2), 1-18.
Johnson, N. R. (2012). Information infrastructure as rhetoric: Tools
for analysis. Poroi, 8(1), 1-3.
Tufecki, Z. (2014). Engineering the public: Big data, surveillance and
computational politics. First Monday, 19(7).
[Link]
NOVEMBER 7, 2015 AT 8:59 PM REPLY
14. ResearchBuzz
This is fantastic. Thank you so much.
NOVEMBER 11, 2015 AT 6:33 AM REPLY
15. Michael Latzer
Dear Tarleton & Nick,
thanks for the effort of putting this very helpful list together.
I would like to draw you attention to the following publications of
our [Link] division:
Latzer, Michael / Hollnbuchner, Katharina / Just, Natascha /
Saurwein, Florian (2014): The economics of algorithmic selection on
the Internet. University of Zurich, Zurich.
[Link]
_algorithmic_selection_WP.pdf
Saurwein, Florian / Just, Natascha / Latzer, Michael (2015):
Governance of algorithms: options and limitations. In: info, Vol. 17
(6), 35-49.
[Link]
[Link]
Dörr, Konstantin (2015): Mapping the field of Algorithmic
Journalism. In: Digital Journalism [Forthcoming online before print],
doi: 10.1080/21670811.2015.1096748.
[Link]
HE_FIELD_OF_ALGORITHMIC_JOURNALISM_DoerrK_.pdf
Best regards,
Michael
NOVEMBER 15, 2015 AT 1:00 PM REPLY
Tarleton Gillespie
Much obliged!
NOVEMBER 25, 2015 AT 5:28 PM REPLY
16. David Brake
A great list I am recommending to my students – I wonder whether
it could be turned into a downloadable RIS file or Mendeley group
or similar to make it easy to “drill down” to the abstracts (or
keyword search them). Or even just put the list of headings at the
top, anchored to the headings down below?
NOVEMBER 16, 2015 AT 9:59 PM REPLY
Tarleton Gillespie
David, Great suggestions. I added the headings at the top,
clickable down to the section below. For starters.
NOVEMBER 25, 2015 AT 5:27 PM REPLY
17. Aaron Halfaker
These might be relevant:
Halfaker, A., Geiger, R. S., Morgan, J. T., & Riedl, J. (2012). The rise
and decline of an open collaboration system: How Wikipedia’s
reaction to popularity is causing its decline. American Behavioral
Scientist, 0002764212469365.
Click to access [Link]
– Discusses how Wikipedia editors developed technologies that use
subjective algorithms to make quality control more efficient, but
they inadvertently also made Wikipedia a harsh place for
newcomers.
Halfaker, A., Geiger, R. S., & Terveen, L. G. (2014, April). Snuggle:
Designing for efficient socialization and ideological critique. In
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in
Computing Systems (pp. 311-320). ACM.
Click to access [Link]
– Discusses how the standpoint of the designers of Wikipedia’s
algorithmic quality control tools was enacted through the processes
that the tools support. Also describes a proof of concept system that
uses the same subjective algorithms to reverse the order and open
up the more dominant systems to critique.
NOVEMBER 25, 2015 AT 11:24 AM REPLY
Tarleton Gillespie
Thanks for these!
NOVEMBER 25, 2015 AT 5:27 PM REPLY
18. Rónán Kennedy (@ronanmkennedy)
This list is very useful. These are a few possible additions, which are
primarily focused on ICT and algorithms in legal, regulatory, and
governance contexts.
Agar, J. (2003). The Government Machine. MIT Press.
Benjamin, S., Bhuvaneswari, R., Rajan, P., & Manjunatha. (2007).
Bhoomi: E-Governance, or, an Anti-Politics Machine Necessary to
Globalize Bangalore? Retrieved 2014-05-19, from
[Link]
[Link]
Bovens, M., & Zouridis, S. (2002). From Street-Level to System-Level
Bureaucracies: How Information and Communication Technology is
Transforming Administrative Discretion and Constitutional Control.
Public Administration Review, 62(2), 174-184.
Citron, D. K. (2008). Open code governance. University of Chicago
Legal Forum, 355-387.
Citron, D. K. (2008). Technological due process. Washington
University Law Review, 85, 1249-1313.
Dunleavy, P., & Margetts, H. (2010). The second wave of digital era
governance. Philosophical Transactions A.
Dunleavy, P., Margetts, H., Bastow, S., & Tinkler, J. (2008). Digital
Era Governance: IT Corporations, the State and E-Government.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dutton, W. H., & Kraemer, K. L. (1980). Automating bias. Society,
17(2), 36-41.
Hildebrandt, M. (2009). Technology and the end of law. In E. Claes,
W. Devroe, & B.
Keirsbilck (Eds.), Facing the limits of the law (p. 443). Berlin:
Springer.
Hildebrandt, M., & Koops, B.-J. (2007). A Vision of Ambient Law.
Retrieved 2014-08-27, from [Link]
deliverables/profiling/d79-a-vision-of-ambient-law/
Kallinikos, J. (2011). Governing through technology: Information
artefacts and social practice. Palgrave Macmillan.
Koops, B.-J. (2008). Criteria for Normative Technology: The
Acceptability of Code as Law in Light of Democratic and
Constitutional Values. In R. Brownsword & K. Yeung (Eds.),
Regulating Technologies. Oxford: Hart Publishing.
Margetts, H., & Dunleavy, P. (2013). The second wave of digital-era
governance: a quasi-paradigm for government on the Web.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical,
Physical and Engineering Sciences, 371.
Morison, J. (2010). Gov 2.0: Towards a User Generated State?
Modern Law Review, 73(4), 551-577.
Schartum, D. W. (2010). Developing eGovernment Systems—Legal,
Technological and Organizational Aspects. Scandinavian Studies in
Law, 56, 125-147.
NOVEMBER 27, 2015 AT 6:25 AM REPLY
19. Christian Sandvig
Are you taking suggestion for removals? I think having the
Kowalski piece at the top of ( overviews | technical ) is pretty
misleading. Kowalski is arguing for the use of predicate logic to
**analyze** algorithms, but the piece is written with an overbroad
title and abstract that means it could easily be mistaken for a
definition of algorithms if you don’t read it all the way through. Far
from being an attempt to define the term “algorithm” or a
foundational article, it’s an obscure approach that didn’t catch on.
NOVEMBER 30, 2015 AT 10:26 AM REPLY
Tarleton Gillespie
Thanks for this. I’ll take a look.
DECEMBER 1, 2015 AT 3:02 PM REPLY
20. Amanda Jurno
Thanks for sharing! These will be very helpful.
APRIL 14, 2016 AT 9:11 AM REPLY
21. Anne Helmond
Rieder, Bernhard. 2016. “Scrutinizing an Algorithmic Technique:
The Bayes Classifier as Interested Reading of Reality.” Information,
Communication & Society 0 (0): 1–18.
doi:10.1080/1369118X.2016.1181195.
Abstract: This paper outlines the notion of ‘algorithmic technique’ as
a middle ground between concrete, implemented algorithms and
the broader study and theorization of software. Algorithmic
techniques specify principles and methods for doing things in the
medium of software and they thus constitute units of knowledge
and expertise in the domain of software making. I suggest that
algorithmic techniques are a suitable object of study for the
humanities and social science since they capture the central
technical principles behind actual software, but can generally be
described in accessible language. To make my case, I focus on the
field of information ordering and, first, discuss the wider historical
trajectory of formal or ‘mechanical’ reasoning applied to matters of
commerce and government before, second, moving to the
investigation of a particular algorithmic technique, the Bayes
classifier. This technique is explicated through a reading of the
original work of M. E. Maron in the early 1960 and presented as a
means to subject empirical, ‘datafied’ reality to an interested reading
that confers meaning to each variable in relation to an operational
goal. After a discussion of the Bayes classifier in relation to the
question of power, the paper concludes by coming back to its initial
motive and argues for increased attention to algorithmic techniques
in the study of software.
MAY 18, 2016 AT 4:17 PM REPLY
22. Natascha Just
Dear Tarleton and Nick,
You may also want to add our new paper:
Just, Natascha / Latzer, Michael (2016): Governance by Algorithms:
Reality Construction by Algorithmic Selection on the Internet. In:
Media, Culture & Society, Published online before print April 21,
2016, doi: 10.1177/0163443716643157
Best regards and many thanks,
Natascha
MAY 30, 2016 AT 4:49 PM REPLY
23. Anne Helmond
Rieder, Bernhard. 2016. “Scrutinizing an Algorithmic Technique:
The Bayes Classifier as Interested Reading of Reality.” Information,
Communication & Society 0 (0): 1–18.
doi:10.1080/1369118X.2016.1181195.
JUNE 1, 2016 AT 2:36 PM REPLY
24. Max Larson
The entry for Kockelman’s “Linguistic anthropology in the age of
language automata” does not link to the correct article. Here is a
correct link:
[Link]
inguistic_Anthropology_in_the_Age_of_Language_Automata_
AUGUST 11, 2016 AT 4:19 PM REPLY
Tarleton Gillespie
Thanks! Fixed.
AUGUST 11, 2016 AT 4:53 PM REPLY
25. Li Zhang
Thank you for this wonderful list.
The url under Burrell, Jenna. 2016. “How the Machine ‘Thinks:’
Understanding Opacity in Machine Learning Algorithms.” links to a
different article. Please update.
OCTOBER 26, 2016 AT 3:29 PM REPLY
26. shepni
Many thanks for putting together and sharing this useful resource!
NOVEMBER 20, 2016 AT 7:23 AM REPLY
27. brendan o'connor (@brendan642)
Our work that looks at racial bias in natural language processing
methods, may be relevant:
Demographic Dialectal Variation in Social Media: A Case Study of
African-American English.
Su Lin Blodgett, Lisa Green, and Brendan O’Connor.
Proceedings of EMNLP 2016.
Click to access [Link]
NOVEMBER 22, 2016 AT 12:09 PM REPLY
28. Estee Beck
Thanks for this great list. You may also want to add a recent
publication:
Beck, Estee. (2016). A theory of persuasive computer algorithms for
rhetorical code studies. Enculturation 23. Available
[Link]
algorithms
NOVEMBER 22, 2016 AT 2:29 PM REPLY
29. dch
Thanks, and also:
Friedman, Batya, Daniel C. Howe, and Edward Felten. “Informed
consent in the Mozilla browser: implementing Value-Sensitive
Design.” System Sciences, 2002. HICSS. Proceedings of the 35th
Annual Hawaii International Conference on. IEEE, 2002.
FEBRUARY 7, 2017 AT 10:36 PM REPLY
30. Amanda Jurno (@amandajurno)
Hello professors,
If papers in other languages are welcome, here is our latest paper on
the subject. If you want to add it to the list, it would be a pleasure.
Jurno, A. C., & d’Andréa, C. F. B. (2017). VISIBILIDADE
ALGORÍTMICA NO “FEED DE NOTÍCIAS” DO
FACEBOOK//ALGORITHMIC (IN) VISIBILITY IN FACEBOOK
NEWS FEED. Contemporanea-Revista de Comunicação e Cultura,
15(2), 463-484. Available:
[Link]
ew/1571 .
Thank you.
NOVEMBER 14, 2017 AT 3:44 PM REPLY
31. piusbmaier
free available version of: Bullynck, Maarten. 2016
see: [Link]
NOVEMBER 20, 2017 AT 9:28 AM REPLY
32. piusbmaier
Kitchin, Rob. 2017 –
[Link]/classes/cs345s/handouts/[Link]
NOVEMBER 20, 2017 AT 10:53 AM REPLY
33. Kakistocracy Man (@jacobsberg)
Fits in with 1.1 and 4.
Berg, Jacob. “Googling Google: Search Engines as Market Actors .”
CORA (Community of Online Research Assignments), 2016.
[Link]
engines-market-actors.
JANUARY 8, 2018 AT 12:51 PM REPLY
34. Carol Stimmel
I’m grateful to have incorporated much of this into a directed
reading list for PhD students interested in these topics.
SEPTEMBER 13, 2018 AT 9:26 AM REPLY
BLOG AT [Link].