Acessibilidade / Reportar erro

Machines among the crowd: on the political effects of algorithmic production of social currents1 1 This article originated from my participation in the panel discussion “Freedom, Emancipation, Democracy: The paradoxes of the digital” in November 2018 at the Maison de France Library in Rio de Janeiro, to which I was invited by professor Jorge de La Barre (UFF), alongside professors Dejan Dimitrijevic (Lyon II) and Laura Graziela Gomes (UFF). Produced in an interaction with Laura Gomes, this article was designed to offer a broad and therefore more theoretical approach to the tensions between digital and political institutions, while Laura’s article analyzed the same subject by taking a specific empirical situation as a starting point.

No meio da multidão, as máquinas: sobre os efeitos políticos da produção algorítmica de correntes sociais

Abstract

In this paper, I discuss a few ways that mechanisms for collective action are reconfigured by the activity of digital communication technologies. In particular, I examine how algorithms mobilized on the Social Web co-participate in the regulation of interdependence between the elements that compose contemporary figurations through the following mechanisms: by the production and organization of sociality by curating content, recommendations, and instructions for users; by their impact on the social production of the categories of time, space and identity; by the expansion of a business model that interlaces algorithmic activity and human action; and by the reconfiguration of the social modes of production and dissemination of knowledge. I conclude with the examination of the political consequences of this algorithmic activity in the production of social currents.

Key words:
Political mobilization; Cyberactivism; Algorithms

Associação Brasileira de Antropologia (ABA) Caixa Postal 04491, 70904-970 Brasília - DF / Brasil, Tel./ Fax 55 61 3307-3754 - Brasília - DF - Brazil
E-mail: vibrant.aba@gmail.com