Michele Willson

Algorithms (and the) everyday

ABSTRACT Our everyday practices are increasingly mediated through online technologies, entailing the navigation and also oft-simultaneous creation of large quantities of information and communication data. The scale and types of activities being undertaken, the data that are being created and engaged with, and the possibilities for analysis, archiving and distribution are now so extensive that technical constructs are necessarily required as a way to manage, interpret and distribute these. These constructs include the platforms, the software, the codes and the algorithms. This paper explores the place of the algorithm in shaping and engaging with the contemporary everyday. It does this via an exploration of some particular instances of algorithmic sorting and presentation as well as considering some of the ways these contribute to shaping our everyday practices and understandings. In doing so, it raises questions about understandings of agency and power, shifting world views and our complex relationship with technologies.

Technology, networks and communities: An exploration of network and community theory and technosocial forms

Technologies such as the internet offer tremendous and potentially transformative possibilities for imagining and living with others. The possibility for new ways of being together raises the question of appropriate concepts, languages and theories to describe, analyse and engage with these social forms and practices. Network and community concepts and rhetoric are most commonly employed for this purpose, yet the differences between them and the rationale for their specific uses are unclear. In order to gain a more nuanced and informed picture, this paper attempts a very broad overview of the fields of network and community theory particularly in relation to technologically mediated social practices. The intent is to begin mapping the uses, limitations and strengths of community and network theory. In the process, the paper will bring to light some of the tensions, issues and concerns surrounding the analysis of technosociality.

The Politics of Social Filtering

Social filtering – the selective engagement with people, communication and other information as a result of the recommendations of others – has always taken place. However, the possibilities of the Internet combined with the growth of online social networking activities have enabled this process to become rapidly more extensive, easier and potentially problematic. This paper focuses on the analysis of the politics of social filtering through social network sites. It argues that what is needed is both a closer examination and evaluation of these processes and also the development of a framework through which to begin such an evaluation. There is also a second intent: to (re)assert the argument that any analysis necessarily needs to take into account and critique the development, implementation and use of technologies (this includes the software, algorithms and code) themselves as well as the people that build and use them.

Framing the women’s AFL: contested spaces and emerging narratives of hope and opportunity for women in sport

Abstract This article explores historical, contemporary and emerging sites of contestation within sports, with a particular focus on women’s Australian Rules football in Australia. Sport played out on the field, in the media, popular culture, governance and legal arenas are positioned in this article as contested public spaces. The increasing presence of women in these spaces is seen as a shift towards a more socially just sporting space. With an emphasis on the contemporary sporting landscape and the historical commencement of the national women’s Australian Football League Women (AFLW) competition in February 2017, the evolution of this sport as a contested space can be understood as it relates to narratives of hope and opportunity for women. With overwhelming public feeling that the first AFLW season was a success, it is time to pause and consider what this development means for elite women’s sport, and women in contemporary Australian society more broadly.

Zynga's Farmville, Social Games and the ethics of Big Data Mining

The increasing necessity of engaging in social interaction through online commercial providers such as Facebook, alongside the ability of providers to extract, aggregate, analyse, and commercialise the data and metadata such activities produce, have attracted considerable attention amongst the media and academic commentators alike. While much of the attention has been focused on the data mining of social networking services such as Facebook, it is equally important to recognise the widespread adoption of large-scale data mining practices in a number of realms, including social games such as the well-known FarmVille and its sequels, created by Zynga. The implicit contract that the public who use these services necessarily engage in requires them to trade information about their friends, their likes, their desires, and their consumption habits in return for their participation in the service. This paper will critically explore the realm of social games utilising Zynga as a central example, with a view to examine the practices, politics, and ethics of data mining and the inherent social media contradiction. In determining whether this contradiction is accidental or purposeful, this paper will ask, in effect, whether Zynga and other big data miners behind social games are entrepreneurial heroes, more sinister FarmVillains, or whether it is possible at all to draw a line between the two? In doing so, Zynga’s data mining approach and philosophy provide an important indicator about the broader integration of data analytics into a range of everyday activities.

Raising the ideal child? Algorithms, quantification and prediction:

The world in which the contemporary child is conceived and raised is one that is increasingly monitored, analysed and manipulated through technological processes. Simultaneously, expectations for the child are changing as new tools and practices for quantifying, managing and predicting achievements and future possibilities become available. Algorithms as ways of anticipating, doing or fixing are central to these technological processes. These intersect with and are informed by social, cultural and political discourses that imagine the ‘ideal’ child. Therefore, this article explores the power of algorithms within the everyday of the child. Drawing upon examples of quantification and prediction practices in the commercial and state sectors, the article raises questions about the issues, challenges and politics of these types of algorithmic approaches in raising and imagining the ‘ideal child’.

The Possibilities of Network Sociality

Technologically networked social forms are broad, extensive and in demand. The rapid development and growth of web 2.0, or the social web, is evidence of the need and indeed hunger for social connectivity: people are searching for many and varied ways of enacting being-together. However, the ways in which we think of, research and write about network(ed) sociality are relatively recent and arguably restricted, warranting further critique and development. This article attempts to do several things: it raises questions about the types of sociality enacted in contemporary techno-society; critically explores the notion of the networked individual and the focus on the individual evident in much of the technology and sociality literature and asks questions about the place of the social in these discussions. It argues for a more well-balanced and multilevelled approach to questions of sociality in networked societies. The article starts from the position that possibilities enabled/afforded by the technologies we have in place have an effect upon the ways in which we understand being in the world together and our possible actions and futures. These possibilities are more than simply supplementary; in many ways they are transformative. The ways in which we grapple with these questions reveals as much about our understandings of sociality as it does about the technologies themselves.