Thinking Outside the Black-Box: The Case for “Algorithmic Sovereignty” in Social Media

Abstract

This article is an interdisciplinary critical analysis of personalization systems and the gatekeeping role of current mainstream social media. The first section presents a literature review of data-driven personalization and its challenges in social media. The second section sheds light on increasing concerns regarding algorithms’ ability to overtly persuade—and covertly manipulate—users for the sake of engagement, introducing the emergence of the exclusive ownership of behavioral modification through hyper-nudging techniques. The third section empirically analyzes users’ expectations and behaviors regarding such data-driven personalization to frame a conceptualization of users’ agency. The fourth section introduces the concept of “algorithmic sovereignty.” Current projects that aim to grant this algorithmic sovereignty highlight some potential applications. Together this novel theoretical framework and empirical applications suggest that, to preserve trust, social media should open their personalization algorithms to a social negotiation as the first step toward a more sustainable social media landscape. To decentralize the immense power of mainstream social media, guarantee a democratic oversight, and mitigate the unintended undesirable consequences of their algorithmic curation, public institutions and civil society could help in developing and researching public algorithms, fostering a collective awareness so as to eventually ensure a fair and accountable “algorithmic sovereignty.”

“Crystal Is Creepy, but Cool”: Mapping Folk Theories and Responses to Automated Personality Recognition Algorithms

“…Personality algorithms geared toward the work force may also leverage economic incentives, because employment seeking people want to be seen and want to be seen in a positive light. While algorithmic sovereignty has been proposed to give people control over their data and who can use it (Reviglio & Agosti, 2020), sovereignty may be weakened by systems like Crystal that use external economic pressure to get people to volunteer their data. In addition, the desire to be seen and the "threat of invisibility" could have material consequences on employment, which could further discipline people into participating (Bucher, 2018).…”

When the Old Becomes the New: How COVID-19 Changed Potentially Creative Action on Facebook

“…As a result, one can easily block disagreement or opposing opinion. Moreover, algorithms 'applied' by the social network (Reviglio & Agosti, 2020) aim to connect people with views and pursuits they have in common. Thus, the potential to become a new environment,…”

“…do not yet form a group apart from their interconnection being reinforced by algorithms or other technological affordances (Reviglio & Agosti, 2020). In other words, in spite of doing this by chance, they have not organized themselves around any cause whilst communicating with each other and with the world (Bennett & Segerberg, 2012).…”

“…Beyond the device of the information bubbles, which places contacts into strict pairs and can impair personal creativity by restricting pluralism of data, actions and interactions (Reviglio & Agosti, 2020), the sharing of experience, as well as that of preserving a public memory by Facebook groups exemplified by Savas (2017), suggested a quest for emotional support mixed with the readiness to leave negativity behind and somehow overcome the distress of the pandemic, even if it was just by re-creating posts. Hence, people seemed to be travelling against time while they gathered enough strength to confront the present and move forward.…”

“…At times when the only means of movement for many people, is remote, not only do meanings change but the materiality of places, people and events changes as well because people use immobile devices to compensate the lack of physical and unfettered movement. This allows me the assumption according to which people can create a new territory through their participation in social media in search not only to their sovereignty (Reviglio & Agosti, 2020), but towards other different intentions. The notional journey from one place, person or event to another (Sheller & Urry, 2004) was already habitual and potentially favorable to creativity, as long as people could use media devices to: access updated information and communicate with others in a different mode observing that people throughout the world were in the same boat, or obtaining the support of others who have similar experiences of anxiety and trauma (Douglas et al, 2009).…”