A nuanced account from a user perspective of what it’s like to live in a datafied world.
We live in a media-saturated society that increasingly transforms our experiences, relations, and identities into data others can analyze and monetize. Algorithms are key to this process, surveilling our most mundane practices, and to many, their control over our lives seems absolute. In Living with Algorithms, Ignacio Siles critically challenges this view by surveying user dynamics in the global south across three algorithmic platforms—Netflix, Spotify, and TikTok—and finds, surprisingly, a more balanced relationship.
Drawing on a wealth of empirical evidence that privileges the user over the corporate, Siles examines the personal relationships that have formed between users and algorithms as Latin Americans have integrated these systems into the structures of everyday life, enacted them ritually, participated in public with and through them, and thwarted them. Sometimes users follow algorithms, Siles finds, and sometimes users resist them. At times, users do both. Agency lies in the navigation of the spaces in-between.
By analyzing what we do with algorithms rather than what algorithms do to us, Living with Algorithms clarifies the debate over the future of datafication and whether we have a say in its development. Concentrating on an understudied region of the global south, the book provides a new perspective on the commonalities and differences among users within a global ecology of technologies.
Author(s): Ignacio Siles
Publisher: The MIT Press
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 234
City: Cambridge
Contents
Acknowledgments
1. Datafication
Datafication and Algorithmic Power
Enacting Algorithms in Daily Life
Mutual Domestication
Algorithmic Platforms in Latin America
Why Costa Rica?
Research Design
Overview of the Book
2. Personalization
Algorithmic Interpellation on Netflix
The Personification of Spotify
Building a Personal Relationship with TikTok’s Algorithms
Concluding Remarks
3. Integration
Integrating Cultural Sources to Watch Netflix
Integrating Cultured Capacities through Spotify’s Recommendations
Integrating Relations across Platforms through TikTok
Concluding Remarks
4. Rituals
Of Rituals and Recommendations on Netflix
Affect, Rituals, and Playlists on Spotify
Boredom and Personalization on TikTok
Concluding Remarks
5. Conversion
Conversion as Sharing Recommendations on Netflix
Conversion as Public Intimacy on Spotify
Conversion as Attachment through TikTok
Concluding Remarks
6. Resistance
Claiming Identity against Netflix’s Biases
Deconfiguring the Spotify User
Revealing TikTok’s Political Project
Concluding Remarks
7. Mutual Domestication
Recognizing the Purposes of Algorithmic Determinism
Five Dynamics of Mutual Domestication
Cyclicity
Algorithms in Costa Rican Culture
Algorithms as Costa Rican Culture
The Multiplicity of Datafication
Appendix: Research Design
Study 1: Netflix (2017–2018)
Study 2: Spotify (2018)
Study 3: Netflix (2019–2020)
Study 4: Spotify (2019–2020)
Study 5: TikTok (2020)
References
Index
