How does algorithmic information processing affect the meaning of the word culture, and, by extension, cultural practice? We address this question by focusing on the Netflix Prize (2006)(2007)(2008)(2009), a contest offering US$1m to the first individual or team to boost the accuracy of the company's existing movie recommendation system by 10%. Although billed as a technical challenge intended for engineers, we argue that the Netflix Prize was equally an effort to reinterpret the meaning of culture in ways that overlapped with, but also diverged in important respects from, the three dominant senses of the term assayed by Raymond Williams. Thus, this essay explores the conceptual and semantic work required to render algorithmic information processing systems legible as forms of cultural decision making. It also then represents an effort to add depth and dimension to the concept of "algorithmic culture." Keywords Algorithm, algorithmic culture, culture, data, movies, Netflix, ratings, Raymond Williams, recommendation, taste "Connect[ing] people to movies they love" is the Netflix company mantra (Netflix Prize, n.d.). It frames the firm as a cheery mediator of people and movies, one that produces delight (and, of course, profit) by fusing technology and subscriber information in a complex alchemy of audiovisual matchmaking. While not inaccurate, such a move mystifies the semantic and socio-technical processes by which these connections are made,

How to ethically conduct online platform-based research remains an unsettled issue and the source of continued controversy. The Facebook emotional contagion study, in which researchers altered Facebook News Feeds to determine whether exposure to emotional content influences a user’s mood, has been one focal point of these discussions. The intense negative reaction by the media and public came as a surprise to those involved—but what prompted this reaction? We approach the Facebook study as a mediated controversy that reveals disconnects between how scholars, technologists, and the public understand platform-based research. We examine the controversy from the bottom up, analyzing public reactions expressed in comments on news articles. Our analysis reveals fundamental disagreements about what Facebook is and what a user’s relationship to it should be. We argue that these divergent responses emphasize the contextual nature of technology and research ethics, and conclude with a relational and contextual approach to ethical decision-making.

No abstract

Social media platforms are prominent sites where values are expressed, contested, and diffused. In this article, we present a conceptual framework for studying the communication of values on and through social media composed of two dimensions: scale (from individual users to global infrastructures) and explicitness (from the most explicit to the invisible). Utilizing the model, we compare the communication of two values—engagement and authenticity—in user-generated content and policy documents on Twitter and Instagram. We find a split between how users and platforms frame these concepts and discuss the strategic role of ambiguity in value discourse, where idealistic meanings invoked by users positively charge the instrumental applications stressed by platforms. We also show how implicit and explicit articulations of the same value can contradict each other. Finally, we reflect upon tensions within the model, as well as the power relations between the personal, cultural, and infrastructural levels of platform values.

Given its massive volume and rapid development of new trends, the universe of user-generated content may seem utterly chaotic. Yet the flow of content is underlined by deep-rooted patterns of communication. In this article, we present the first systematic attempt to identify these patterns using the concept of social media rituals. Understood as typified communicative practices that formalize and express shared values, rituals offer a productive path to categorize popular genres of content and trace the values they convey. Integrating theoretical literature on rituals with empirical studies of social media genres, we develop a typology of 16 rituals that express diverse values, ranging from respect and responsibility to materialism and pleasure. Furthermore, we show that rituals embed different notions of good communication, as reflected in the values of authenticity, persuasion, affiliation, and demonstration. Finally, we discuss how our framework can facilitate comparative investigations of user-generated content and platform values.