This paper examines folk theories of algorithmic recommendations on Spotify in order to make visible the cultural specificities of data assemblages in the global South. The study was conducted in Costa Rica and draws on triangulated data from 30 interviews, 4 focus groups with 22 users, and the study of “rich pictures” made by individuals to graphically represent their understanding of algorithmic recommendations. We found two main folk theories: one that personifies Spotify (and conceives of it as a social being that provides recommendations thanks to surveillance) and another one that envisions it as a system full of resources (and a computational machine that offers an individualized musical experience through the appropriate kind of “training”). Whereas the first theory emphasizes local conceptions of social relations to make sense of algorithms, the second one stresses the role of algorithms in providing a global experience of music and technology. We analyze why people espouse either one of these theories (or both) and how these theories provide users with resources to enact different modalities of power and resistance in relation to recommendation algorithms. We argue that folk theories thus offer a productive way to broaden understanding of what agency means in relation to algorithms.

Summary We hypothesize that dosage compensation of critical genes arises from systems-level properties for cancer cells to withstand the negative effects of aneuploidy. We identified several candidate genes in cancer multiomics data and developed a biocomputational platform to construct a mathematical model of their interaction network with micro-RNAs and transcription factors, where the property of dosage compensation emerged for MYC and was dependent on the kinetic parameters of its feedback interactions with three micro-RNAs. These circuits were experimentally validated using a genetic tug-of-war technique to overexpress an exogenous MYC , leading to overexpression of the three microRNAs involved and downregulation of endogenous MYC. In addition, MYC overexpression or inhibition of its compensating miRNAs led to dosage-dependent cytotoxicity in MYC -amplified colon cancer cells. Finally, we identified negative correlation of MYC dosage compensation with patient survival in TCGA breast cancer patients, highlighting the potential of this mechanism to prevent aneuploid cancer progression.

Gabriela" is a 21-year-old sound engineer based in San José, Costa Rica. Music occupies a good part of her day, both for professional and personal reasons. In 2014, she created her own account on Spotify. Although she also uses a wide range of social media platforms, Spotify is, by her own admission, the only app that she is willing to pay for. During an interview we conducted for this project, "Gabriela" was hard pressed to find something she did not like about the platform. She discussed extensively what made the service so appealing to her. The following quote summarizes what she mainly uses Spotify for: I made a playlist that was called "Nostalgic Jams," which is a playlist that is simply like nostalgic vibes. I made a little cover for it and it is a playlist similar to R&B [rhythm and blues], but slow and nostalgic. For me, that's like a genre or subgenre that I have to conceptualize, which I named and made public. "Gabriela's" comments provide us with an opportunity to present four issues discussed in this article. First, we elaborate on how music "is a cultural form that has strong connections to emotions, feelings, and moods: the domain of affect" (Hesmondhalgh, 2013, p. 11). Specifically, this article discusses how users turn to Spotify as a means to cultivate moods and emotions. The notion of cultivation stresses the dynamic and ritual work involved in producing, capturing, and exploring moods and emotions. It is also meant to stress how music and affect mutually constitute each other (DeNora, 2000). Second, "Gabriela" reveals the centrality of playlists in how users experience music streaming services nowadays. On its support website, Spotify (2019) promotes playlists as "collection[s] of music. You can make them for yourself, you can share them, and you can enjoy the millions of other playlists created by Spotify, artists, and fans." Dias, Gonçalves, and Fonseca (2017) define playlists as "ordered sequence[s] of songs meant to be listened to as a group" (p. 14379). We show that creating playlists requires a set of practices and technologies to materialize affect into an artifact and thus cultivate moods and emotions (Orlikowski, 2007).

En este artículo, se discute cómo usuarias y usuarios interactúan con contenido noticioso publicado por sitios costarricenses de noticias en Facebook. Utilizando una metodología mixta que combinó el análisis de redes sociales (social network analysis) y el análisis de contenido, se examinó la información publicada por seis sitios costarricenses de noticiasdurante cuatro meses de 2016. Se identificó una clara preferencia de los usuarios por noticias sobre asuntos no públicos, como sucesos, fútbol y entretenimiento. En cambio, las noticias sobre asuntos públicos, como política, economía y gobierno, recibieron relativamente poca interacción de parte de las usuarias y los usuarios. Asimismo, se analizó una diferencia estructural en cómo las personas interactuaron con la información publicada por varios sitios informativos. Se concluye con una discusión de las oportunidades analíticas que ofrece el estudio de la circulación de noticias en Facebook.

Bioinspired intelligence methods are currently common approaches for both engineers and the scientists [...]