Algorithmic Cultures ─ Essays on Meaning, Performance and New Technologies

This book assembles analyses intended to raise issues concerning the emergence and subsequent ubiquity of algorithms in various realms of social life. The plural "cultures" in the title was chosen to emphasize: 1) algorithms’ increasing importance in forming a new epistemic and organizational paradigm; and 2) the multifaceted analysis of algorithms across an increasing number of research fields. The various authors address the complex interrelations between groups and algorithms in the construction of meaning and social interaction. Furthermore, they highlight their performative dimensions by exposing the dialectic processes by which algorithms – themselves the product of a specific approach to the world – frame reality, while at the same time organizing how people think about society. Contributions from leading experts (e.g. Introna, Gillespie) will warrant serious academic attention, and those from more junior scholars will greatly widen and update the field by including, for example, case studies on social media platforms, gaming, financial trading and mobile security infrastructures such as drones.

Robert Seyfert is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cluster of Excellence "Cultural Foundations of Social Integration" at Universitat Konstanz, Germany, and Visiting Full Professor of Comparative Cultural Sociology at Europa-Universitat Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. He recently published in Theory, Culture & Society and European Journal of Social Theory.

Jonathan Roberge is Assistant Professor of Cultural and Urban Sociology at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Quebec; he holds the Canada Research Chair in Digital Culture, in addition to being a Faculty Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University.

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