Algorithms of Resistance: The Everyday Fight against Platform Power
Feb 2024 · MIT Press
Ebook
256
Pages
Tools
info
family_home
Eligible
info
About this ebook
How global workers, influencers, and activists develop tactics of algorithmic resistance by appropriating and repurposing the same algorithms that control our lives.
Algorithms are all around us, permeating more and more aspects of our daily lives. While accounts of platform power tend to come across as bleak and monolithic, Algorithms of Resistance shows how people can resist algorithms across a variety of domains. Drawing from rich ethnographic materials and perspectives from both the Global North and South, authors Tiziano Bonini and Emiliano Treré explore how people appropriate and reconfigure algorithms to pursue their objectives in three domains of everyday life: gig work, cultural industries, and politics. They reveal how forms of algorithmic agency and resistance are endemic and mundane and how the platform society is a contested battleground of contrasting forces.
Bonini and Treré begin by outlining their key theoretical framework of moral economies. This framework argues that algorithms exist on a continuum. At its two extremes are two competing moral economies: the user moral economy and the platform moral economy. From here, Algorithms of Resistance chronicles the various inventive ways that individuals can work to achieve agency and resist the ubiquitous power of algorithms. Casting a wide net with a diverse range of case studies, Bonini and Treré reveal the moral imperative for all of us—from delivery drivers to artists to social movements—to resist algorithms.
Algorithms are all around us, permeating more and more aspects of our daily lives. While accounts of platform power tend to come across as bleak and monolithic, Algorithms of Resistance shows how people can resist algorithms across a variety of domains. Drawing from rich ethnographic materials and perspectives from both the Global North and South, authors Tiziano Bonini and Emiliano Treré explore how people appropriate and reconfigure algorithms to pursue their objectives in three domains of everyday life: gig work, cultural industries, and politics. They reveal how forms of algorithmic agency and resistance are endemic and mundane and how the platform society is a contested battleground of contrasting forces.
Bonini and Treré begin by outlining their key theoretical framework of moral economies. This framework argues that algorithms exist on a continuum. At its two extremes are two competing moral economies: the user moral economy and the platform moral economy. From here, Algorithms of Resistance chronicles the various inventive ways that individuals can work to achieve agency and resist the ubiquitous power of algorithms. Casting a wide net with a diverse range of case studies, Bonini and Treré reveal the moral imperative for all of us—from delivery drivers to artists to social movements—to resist algorithms.
How global workers, influencers, and activists develop tactics of algorithmic resistance by appropriating and repurposing the same algorithms that control our lives.
Algorithms are all around us, permeating more and more aspects of our daily lives. While accounts of platform power tend to come a...
Discover more
About the author
Tiziano Bonini is Associate Professor in Sociology of Culture and Communication in the Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Siena in Italy.
Emiliano Treré is Reader in Data Agency and Media Ecologies at Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Culture. He is the author of Hybrid Media Activism, winner of the Outstanding Book Award of the ICA Interest Group “Activism, Communication and Social Justice.”
Emiliano Treré is Reader in Data Agency and Media Ecologies at Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Culture. He is the author of Hybrid Media Activism, winner of the Outstanding Book Award of the ICA Interest Group “Activism, Communication and Social Justice.”
Tiziano Bonini is Associate Professor in Sociology of Culture and Communication in the Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Siena in Italy.
Emiliano Treré is Reader in Data Agency and Media Ecologies at Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and C...
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
